
Class2)X30Q-l 
Book-__'-nJ2-- 



PKESENTEO BY 



William B. fhntth, 

U. 8. Botanic Ca ^den, 
THE wiaoMfOH,M.o. 

/ 

LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 



MEMOIllS OF DISTINGUISHED 



SCOTTISH FEMALE CHARACTERS, 



EMBRACING THE 



PERIOD OF THE COVENANT AND THE PERSECUTION. 



BY REV. JAMES ANDERSON. 




REDFIELD, 

CLINTON HALL, NEW YORK. 
1851. 












&JUL . 11 - $($ 



PREFACE. 



In collecting materials for " The Martyrs of the Bass," pub- 
lished some time ago, in a volume entitled " The Bass Rock," it 
occurred to the author, from the various notices he met with of 
ladies who were distinguished for their patriotic interest or suf- 
ferings in the cause of nonconformity, during the period of the 
Covenant, and particularly, during the period of the persecution, 
that sketches of the most eminent or best known of these ladies 
would be neither uninteresting nor unedifying. In undertaking 
such a work at this distance of time, he is aware of the disad- 
vantage under which he labors, from the poverty of the materials 
at his disposal, compared with the more abundant store from 
which a contemporary writer might have executed the same task. 
He, however, flatters himself that the materials which, with some 
industry, he has collected, are not unworthy of being brought to 
light ; the more especially as the female biography of the days 
of the Covenant, and of the persecution, is a field which has been 
trodden by no preceding writer, and which may, therefore, be 
presumed to haA^e something of the freshness of novelty. 

The facts in these lives have been gathered from a widely- 
scattered variety of authorities, both manuscript and printed. 
From the voluminous manuscript records of the privy council, 



4 PREFACE. 

deposited in her majesty's general register-house, Edinburgh, and 
from the Wodrow MSS., belonging to the library of the faculty 
of advocates, Edinburgh, the author has derived much assistance. 
The former of these documents he was obligingly permitted to 
consult by William Pitt Dundas, Esq., deputy-clerk of her maj- 
esty's register-house. And to the Wodrow MSS., he has, at all 
times, obtained the readiest access, through the liberality of the 
curators of the advocates' library, and the kind attentions of the 
librarians. He has also had equally ready access to such books 
in that invaluable library, many of them rare and expensive, as 
served to illustrate his subject. In the course of the work, he 
has had occasion to acknowledge his obligations to several gen- 
tlemen, from whom he has obtained important information. As 
to some of the ladies of rank here noticed, there probably exist, 
in the form of letters, and other documents, materials for more 
fully illustrating their lives, among the family manuscripts of 
their descendants, to which the author has not had access. The 
publication of such papers, if they exist, or of selections from 
such other papers as relate to the civil and ecclesiastical trans- 
actions of Scotland in the olden time, which may be lying, moth- 
eaten and mouldering away, in the repositories of our noble 
families, would furnish valuable contributions to this department 
of the literature of our country ; and an example, in this respect, 
well worthy of imitation, has been set by Lord Lindsay, in his 
very interesting work entitled, " Lives of the Lindsays." 

These Biographies it has been thought proper to precede by 
an Introduction, containing various miscellaneous observations 
bearing on the subject, but the chief object of which is to give a 
general view of the patriotic interest in the cause of religion taken 
by the ladies of Scotland, during the period which these inquiries 
embrace. The Appendix consists of a number of papers illus- 
trative of passages in the text ; some of which have been previ- 



PREFACE. 5 

ously printed, and others of which are now printed from the 
originals, or from copies, for the first time. 

In compiling these memoirs it has been the aim of the author 
throughout to reduce within moderate limits his multifarious 
materials, which might easily have been spread over a much 
larger surface. At the same time, he has endeavored to bring 
together the most important facts to be known from accessible 
sources respecting these excellent women, and has even intro- 
duced a variety of minute particulars in their history, which he 
was at considerable, and, as some may think, unnecessary pains 
to discover. But he believes that careful research into minute 
particulars, in the lives of ladies so eminent, and who were 
closely connected with so important a period of the history of 
our church, as that of the struggles and sufferings of the Scottish 
Covenanters in the cause of religious and civil liberty, is not to 
be considered as altogether unnecessary labor. " As to some 
departments of history and biography," says Foster, " I never 
can bring myself to feel that it is worth while to undergo all this 
labor ; but," speaking of the English Puritans, he adds, " with 
respect to that noble race of saints, of which the world will not 
see the like again (for in the millennium good men will not be 
formed and sublimed' amidst persecution), it is difficult to say 
what degree of minute investigation is too much — especially in 
an age in which it is the fashion to misrepresent and decry 
them."* This remark is equally applicable to the Scottish cov- 
enanters. Their pre-eminent worth warrants and will reward 
the fullest investigation into their history, independent of the 
light which this will throw on the character and manners of their 
age. Of course, it is not meant to affirm that they were exalted 
above the errors and infirmities of humanity, or that we are im- 
plicitly to follow them in everything, whether in sentiment or in 
* Foster's Life, vol. ii., p. 127. 
1* 



6 PREFACE. 

action, as if we had not as good a right to act on the great prot- 
estant principle of judging for ourselves, as they had ; or as if 
they had been inspired like prophets and apostles. But it may 
be safely asserted that, though not entitled to be ranked as per- 
fect and inspired men, they had attained to an elevation and 
compass of Christian character, which would have rendered them 
no unmeet associates and coadjutors of prophets and apostles ; 
and even many of their measures, ecclesiastical and civil, bore 
the stamp of such maturity of wisdom, as showed them to be in 
advance, not only of their own age, but even of ours, and the de- 
feat of which measures, it may be said, without exaggeration, 
has thrown back the religious condition of Britain and Ireland 
for centuries. 

J. A. 
Edinburgh, September, 1850. 



CONTENTS. 



Introduction page 9 

Lady Anne Cunningham, Marchioness of Hamilton 27 

Lady Boyd 36 

Elizabeth Melvill, Lady Culross 49 

Lady Jane Campbell, Viscountess of Kenmure 62 

Lady Margaret Douglas, Marchioness of Argyll 86 

Mrs. James Guthrie Ill 

Mrs. James Durham 118 

Mrs. John Carstairs 124 

Lady Anne, Duchess of Hamilton 129 

Mrs. William Veitch 159 

Mrs. John Livingstone, &c „ 181 

Lady Anne Lindsay, Duchess of Rothes 199 

Lady Mary Johnston, Countess of Crawford 213 

Barbara Cunningham, Lady Caldwell 220 

Lady Colvill 241 

Catharine Rigg, Lady Cavers 253 

Isabel Alison « 272 

Marion Harvey 288 

Helen Johnston, Lady Graden 300 

Lilias Dunbar, Mrs. Campbell 313 

Margaret M'Lauchlan and Margaret Wilson 340 

Lady Anne Mackenzie, Countess of Balcarres, afterward Countess 

of Argyll 356 

Henrietta Lindsay, Lady Campbell of Auchinbreck 395 

Grisell Hume, Lady Baillie of Jerviswood 428 

Lady Catharine Hamilton, Duchess of Atholl 459 



CONTENTS. 



APPENDIX. 



No. I. — Letter of Mr. Robert M'Ward to Lady Ardross. . .page 473 
II. — The Marchioness of Argyll's Interview with Middleton, 

after the Condemnation of her Husband 473 

III. — Marchioness of Argyll, and her Son the Earl of Argyll. . 474 

IV. — Letter of Mrs. John Carstairs to her Husband 474 

V. — Suspected Corruption of Clarendon's History 475 

VI. — Indictment of Isabel Alison and Marion Harvey 476 

VII. — Apprehension of Hume of Graden, and the Scuffle in 

which Thomas Ker of Heyhope was killed 479 

VIII. — The Fiery Cross carried through the Shire of Moray in 

1679 460 

IX. — Desired Extension of the Indulgence to Morayshire 484 

X. — Sense in which the Covenanters refused to say, " God 

save the King!" 486 

XL — Countess of Argyll's Sympathy with the Covenanters 487 

XII. — A Letter of the Earl of Argyll to his Lady, in Ciphers. . 483 
XIII. — Extracts from a Letter of the Countess of Argyll to her 

Son Colin, Earl of Balcarres 489 

XIV. — Sufferings of Sir Duncan Campbell of Auchinbreck 493 



INTRODUCTION. 



The period embraced in the following sketches is the reigns 
of James VI., his son, and two grandsons ; but more particularly 
the reigns of his two grandsons, Charles II. and James VII., the 
materials for illustrating the lives of such of our female worthies 
as lived during their reigns, being most abundant. All the ladies 
here sketched, whether in humble life or in exalted stations, were 
distinguished, by their zeal or by their sufferings, in the cause of 
religious truth ; and it is by this zeal and these sufferings that the 
most of them are now best known to us. Our notices, then, it is 
obvious, will be chiefly historical, though not so exclusively his- 
torical as to forbid the introduction of such illustrations of the 
personal piety of these ladies as time has spared ; and of such 
portions of their domestic history as may seem to be invested 
with interest, and to furnish matter of instruction. 

It is first of all worthy of special notice, that the peculiar ec- 
clesiastical principles contended for, or sympathized with, by all 
these ladies, were substantially the same. This arose from the 
circumstance that all these monarchs sought to subvert substan- 
tially the same ecclesiastical principles. Bent on the acquisi- 
tion of absolute power, they avowedly and perseveringly labored 
to overturn the presbyterian government of the Scottish church, 
which, from its favorable tendency to the cause of liberty, was 
an obstruction in their path; and to impose, by force, upon the 
Scottish people, the prelatic hierarchy, which promised to be more 
subservient to their wishes. As to the means for attaining this 
object, all these monarchs were unprincipled and unscrupulous ; 
and each, more degenerate than his predecessor, became, to an 
increasing degree, reckless in the measures he adopted. James" 
VI., who plumed himself on his king-craft, endeavored, by cor- 
rupting and overawing the general assemblies of the church, to 
get them to destroy their liberties, by introducing with their own 



10 INTRODUCTION TO 

hands, prelacy, and the ceremonies of the Anglican church. 
Charles I. adopted a more bold, direct, and expeditious course, 
attempting to impose a book of canons and a liturgy by his sole 
authority, without consulting any church judicatory whatever ; 
in which, however, he failed of success, his tyranny issuing in 
the triumph of the cause he intended to destroy. Charles II., 
following in the steps of his father, proceeded, on his restoration, 
to establish prelacy on the ruins of presbytery in like manner by 
his sole authority ; and, having more in his power than his father, 
to enforce conformity by the exaction of fines, by imprisonment, 
banishment, torture, public executions, and massacres in the 
fields. James VII., who went even further than his brother, 
father, or grandfather, attempted to exercise absolute power in a 
more unmitigated form than they had ever done, and determined, 
Avhat none of them had ventured to do, to make popery the es- 
tablished religion throughout his dominions. And in this infat- 
uated course he obstinately persevered, till he alienated from him 
the great body of his subjects of all ranks, and till, after a short 
reign of three years, he was driven from his throne. Thus, the 
same ecclesiastical principles being assailed by all these mon- 
archs, the testimony of our presbyterian ancestors, under all their 
reigns, was substantially the same. The great principles for 
which they contended may be reduced to these three, from which 
all the rest flow as corollaries : First, that Christ is the alone king 
and head of his church, having the alone right to appoint her 
form of government ; secondly, that presbytery is the only form 
of church government which he has instituted in his word ; and 
thirdly, that the church is free in her government from every other 
jurisdiction, except that of Christ. These principles, all the 
ladies sketched in this volume either maintained or sympathized 
with ; and many of them suffered much in their behalf. During 
the whole extent of the period we have embraced, there is evi- 
dence of the existence of a public religious spirit among the 
women of Scotland, and as we advance downward, we find this 
spirit becoming more generally diffused. 

In the reign of James VI., ladies in every station of life warm- 
ly espoused the cause of the ministers who opposed the monarch 
in his attempts to establish prelacy. Some of them even wielded 
the pen in the cause with no small effect. The wives of .Mr. 
James Lawson and Mr. Walter Balcanquil, ministers of Edin- 
burgh, wrote vigorously in defence of their husbands, who had 
been compelled to fly to England for having publicly condemned 
in their sermons the black acts, as they were called, of the ser- 



THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 11 

vile parliament of 1#84, by which presbytery was overthrown, 
and the liberties of the church laid at the feet of the king. They 
boldly entered the lists with Patrick Adamson, archbishop of St. 
Andrews, who had written in condemnation of the conduct of 
their husbands, and answered him in a long paper, exposing with 
energy, acuteness, and success, the falsehood of his assertions 
and the imbecility or fallacy of his reasonings ; treating him at 
the time with little ceremony. As to the old and common re- 
proach, they say, against God's servants — troublers of common- 
wealths, rebels against princes, irreverent speakers against those 
in authority, they may bear with it, since their Master was simi- 
larly reproached, yea, was even accused of speaking by Beel- 
zebub, the prince of the devils. " We will say but this much 
shortly," they add, " as Elias said to Ahab, ' It is thou and thy 
father's house that trouble Israel.' It is thou and the remnant 
of you, pharisaical prelates, because ye are not trained up in the 
place of popes that would mix heaven and earth, ere the pomp 
of your prelacies decay."* The power of this defence may be 
estimated from the irritation which it caused the prelate, and from 
the manner in which he met it. So completely had " the weaker 
vessel" pinned him, that though he " had manie grait giftes, bot 
specialie excellit in the toung and pen,"f he shrunk from encoun- 
tering these spirited females with their own weapons, and, skulk- 
ing behind the throne, directed against them the thunderbolt of a 
royal proclamation, which charged them instantly, under pain of 
rebellion, to leave their manses. This they accordingly did, 
selling their household furniture, and delivering the keys of their 
manses to the magistrates. By the same proclamation, several 
other ladies of respectability, who are described as " worse af- 
fected to the obedience of our late acts of parliament," are com- 
manded, under the same pains, " to remove from the capital, and 
retire beyond the water of Tay, till they give farther declaration 
of their disposition."^: 

The ardent and heroic attachment to the cause of presbytery 
displayed by Mrs. Welsh, the wife of Mr. John Welsh, minister 
of Ayr, and the wives of the other five ministers, who, with him, 
were tried at Linlithgow, in 1606, on a charge of high treason, 
for holding a general assembly at Aberdeen, in July the prece- , 
ding year, is also worthy of special notice. When informed that 
a verdict of guilty was brought in by a corrupt jury — a verdict 
which inferred the penalty of death, " instead of lamenting their 

* Calderwood's History, vol. iv., p. 127. t James Melville's Diary, p. 293. 

t M'Cries Life of Melville, vol. i., p. 327. 



12 INTRODUCTION TO 

fate, they praised God who had given their husbands courage to 
stand to the cause of their master, adding, that like him, they had 
been judged and condemned under covert of night."* Of these 
ladies, Mrs. Welsh, who was the daughter of our illustrious re- 
former, John Knox,f is best known. The curious interview 
which took place between her and King James, when she peti- 
tioned him for permission to her husband to return to his native 
country for the benefit of his health,! must be too familiar to our 
readers to be here repeated. 

* M'Crie's Life of Knox, vol. ii., p. 271. 

t Her name was Elizabeth. She was his third and youngest daughter by his 
second wife, Margaret Stewart, daughter of Lord Ochiltree, a nobleman of amiable 
disposition, and his steady friend under all circumstances. A curious anecdote 
connected with Knox's marriase to Lord Ochiltree's daughter, is contained in a let- 
ter written by Mr. Robert Millar, minister of Paisley, to> Wodrow, the historian 
of the Sufferings of the Church of Scotland, dated November 15, 1722 : and, as it 
has never before been printed, it may be here inserted : " Mr. John Campbell, min- 
ister at Craigie,'' says Mr. Millar, " told me this story of Mr. Knox's marriage, so 
far as I mind it. John Knox, before the light of the Reformation broke up, travelled 
among several honest families in the west of Scotland who were converts to the 
protestant religion ; particularly he visited oft Stewart, Lord Ochiltree's family, 
preaching the gospel privately to those who were willing to receive it. The lady 
and some of the family were converts ; her ladyship had a chamber, table, stool, and 
candlestick, for the prophet, and one night about supper, says to him, ' Mr. Knox, I 
think you are at a loss by waut of a wife ;' to which he said, ' Madam. 1 think no- 
body will take such a wanderer as I ;' to which she replied, ' Sir, if that be your 
objection, I'll make inquiry to find an answer 'gainst our next meeting.' The lady 
accordingly addressed herself to her eldest daughter, telling her she might be very 
happy if she could marry Mr. Knox, who would be a great reformer and a credit to 
the church ; but she despised the proposal, hoping her ladyship wished her better 
than to marry a pool wanderer. The lady addressed herself to her second daueh- 
ter, who answered as the eldest. Then the lady spoke to her third daughter, about 
nineteen years of acre, who very frankly said. ' Madam, I '11 be very willing to mar- 
ry him, but I fear he will not take me ;' to which the lady replied, ' If that be all 
your objection, I'll soon get you an answer.' Next night, at supper, the lady said 
to Mr. Knox, ' Sir, I have been considering upon a wife to you, and find one very 
willing.' To which Knox said, ' Who is it, madam V She answered, ' My young 
daughter sitting by you at table.' Then, addressing himself to the young lady, he 
said, ' My bird, are you willing to marry me ?' She answered, ' Yes, sir, only I fear 
you 11 not be willing to take me.' He said, ' My bird, if you be willing to take me, 
you must take your venture of God's providence, as I do. I go through the coun- 
try sometimes on my foot, with a wallet on my arm, a shirt, a clean band, and a bi- 
ble in it ; you may put some things in it for yourself, and if I bid you take the wal- 
let, you must do it, and go where I go, and lodge where I lodge.' — ' Sir,' says she, 
'111 do all this.' — Will you be as good as your word?' — 'Yes, I will.' Upon 
which, the marriage was concluded, and she lived happily with him, and had seve- 
ral children by him. She went with him to Geneva, and as he was ascending a hill, 
ae there are many near that place, she got up to the top of it before him, and took the 
wallet on her arm, and, sitting down, said, ' Now, goodman, am not I as good as my 
word?' She afterward lived with him when he was minister at Edinburgh. I 
am told," adds Mr. Millar, " that one of that Lady Ochiltree's daughters, a sister of 
John Knox's wife, was married to Thomas Millar, of Temple, one of my predeces- 
sors." — Letters to Wodrow, vol xix., 4to., No. 197. 

X Welsh and the other ministers had been banished the king's dominions for 
life. 



THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 13 

Among the ladies of rank who, in the reign of James VI., 
were distinguished for their piety and devotedness to the liber- 
ties of the church, were Lady Lilias Graham, countess of Wig- 
ton, to whom Mr. John Welsh, who intimately knew her, wrote 
that famous letter from Blackness castle, which lias been repeat- 
edly printed and often admired ;* Lady Anne Livingstone, coun- 
tess of Eglington, who, " although bred at court, yet proved a sub- 
dued and eminent Christian, and an encourager of piety and 
truth ;"f Lady Margaret Livingstone, countess of Wigton, the 
friend and patron of Mr. John Livingstone, and whom, together 
with the two preceding, he classes among " the professors in the 
church of Scotland of his acquaintance, who were eminent for 
grace and gifts ;" and, omitting many others, Lady Margaret Cun- 
ningham (sister to the marchioness of Hamilton), who was mar- 
ried, first to Sir James Hamilton of Evandale, secondly to Sir 
James Maxwell of Calderwood ; a lady, whom Robert Boyd, in 
recording her death, which took place about September, 1023, 
describes as " that virtuous lady, equal, if not beyond any I have 
known in Scotland," " a woman of an excellent spirit, and many 
crosses through her whole life," " diligent and active, and a fear- 
er of God."! 

In the reign of Charles I, a public-spirited interest in the cause 
of religious and ecclesiastical freedom prevailed still more among 
women of all classes in our country. Those in the humbler ranks 
became famous for their resolute opposition to the reading of the 
" black service-book," which was to be read for the first time by 
the dean of Edinburgh, in the old church of St. Giles, on Sabbath, 
July 23, 1637. To witness the scene, an immense crowd of 
people had assembled, and among the audience were the lord- 
chancellor, the lords of the privy council, the judges and bishops. 
At the stated hour, the dean ascended the reading-desk, arrayed 
in his surplice, and opened the service-book. But no sooner 
did he begin to read, than the utmost confusion and uproar pre- 
vailed. The indignation of the people Avas roused ; " false anti- 
Christian," " wolf," " beastly-bellied god," " crafty fox," " ill- 
hanged thief," were some of the emphatic appellations which 
came pouring in upon him from a hundred tongues, and which told 
him that he occupied a perilous position. But the person whose 
fervent zeal was most conspicuous on that occasion, was an hum- 
ble female who kept a cabbage-stall at the Tron Kirk, and who 

* Select Biographies, printed for the Wodrow Society, vol. i., p. 18. 
t Ibid., vol. i. t p 347. 

1 Wodrow's Life of Boyd, printed for the Maitland Club, p. 266. 
2 



14 INTRODUCTION TO 

was siitingnear the reading-desk. Greatly excited at the dean's 
presumption, this female, whose name was Janet Geddes — a name 
familiar in Scotland as a household word, exclaimed, at the top 
of her voice, " Villain, dost thou say mass at my lug V and suiting 
the action to the word, launched the cutty-stool on which she had 
been sitting at his head, " intending," as a contemporary writer re- 
marks, " to have given him a ticket of remembrance, but jouking be- 
came his safeguard at that time."* The same writer adds : " The 
church was immediately emptied of the most part of the congre- 
gation, and the doors thereof barred at the commandment of the 
secular power. A good Christian woman, much desirous to remove, 
perceiving she could get no passage-patent, betook herself to her 
bible in a remote corner of the church. As she was there stop- 
ping her ears at the voice of the popish charmers, whom she re- 
marked to be very headstrong in the public practice of their anti- 
Christian rudiments, a young man sitting behind her began to 
sound forth, ' Amen.' At the hearing thereof she quickly turned 
her about ; and, after she had warmed both his cheeks with the 
weight of her hands, she thus shot against him the thunderbolt 
of her zeal : ' False thief,' said she, ' is there no other part of the 
kirk to sing mass in, but thou must sing it at my lug V The 
young man being dashed with such a hot, unexpected rencounter, 
gave place to silence in sign of his recantation. I can not here 
omit a worthy reproof given at the same time by a truly religious 
matron ; for, when she perceived one of Ishmael's mocking 
daughters to deride her for her fervent expressions in behalf of 
her heavenly Master, she thus sharply rebuked her with an ele- 
vated voice, saying, ' Wo be to those that laugh when Zion 
mourns.' "f 

At that period, the gentler sex were particularly unceremonious 
toward turn-coat or time-serving ministers. Baillie gives a very 
graphic account of the treatment Mr. William Annan, the pre- 
latic minister of Ayr, met with from the women of Glasgow : 
" At the outgoing of the church, about thirty or forty of our hon- 

* " The immortal Janet Geddes," as she is styled in a pamphet of the period 
(Edinburgh's Joy, &c. f lfi61), survived long after her heroic onslaught on the dean 
of Edinburgh. She kept a cabbage-stall at the Tron Kirk, as late as 1661. She is 
specially mentioned in the Mercurius Cahdoniuf, a newspaper published imme- 
diately after the Restoration, as having taken a prominent share in the rejoicings 
on the coronation of Charles II., in 1661. See Wilson's Memorials of Edinburgh in 
vol. i., pp. 92, 93, and vol. ii., p. 30. 

t " Brief and True Relation of the Broil which fell out on the Lord's day, the 23d 
of July, 1637, through the Occasion of a black, popish, and superstitious Service- 
Book, which was then illegally introduced and impudently vented within the 
Churches of Edinburgh ;" published August thereafter. Printed in Rothe's Rela- 
tion, &c. Appendix, pp. 198, 199. 



THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 15 

estest women, in one voyce, before the bishope and magistrate, 
did fall in rayling, cursing, scolding, with clamours, on Mr. Wil- 
liam Annan ; some two of the meanest were taken to the Tol- 
booth. All the day over, up and down the streets where he went, 
he got threats of sundry in words and looks ; but after supper, 
when needlesslie he will goe to visit the bishope, he is no sooner 
on the causey, at nine o'clock on a week night, with three or four 
ministers with him, but some hundreds of inraged women of all 
qualities are about him, with neaves, and staves, and peats, but 
no stones ; they beat him sore ; his cloak, ruff', hatt, were rent ; 
however, upon his cries, and candles set out from many windows, 
he escaped all bloody wounds ; yet he was in great danger even 
of killing:'* 

In this, and in some other instances, the indignation of the 
" honest women" of those days at renegade or persecuting cler- 
gymen, may have carried them somewhat beyond the bounds of 
moderation. On other occasions, acting more decorously, they 
assembled peaceably together to petition the government for lib- 
erty to the nonconforming ministers to preach wherever they 
were called or had opportunity.! And, though precluded from 
bearing a part in public debates, they contemplated with the 
deepest interest those ecclesiastical movements, which, guided 
by men of great talents, firmness, and spirit, issued in the glo- 
rious triumph of the church over the attempts of the court to en- 
slave her. Nor was this interest limited to women in the hum- 
bler and middle classes of society. The baronesses, the coun- 
tesses, the marchionesses, and the duchesses, of the day partook 
of it, and encouraged their husbands and their sons to stand by 
the church in her struggles for freedom, regardless of the frowns 
and the threats of power. The zeal Avith which the marchioness 
of Hamilton, Lady Boyd, and Lady Culross, maintained the good 
cause, appears from the brief notices of their lives which have 
been transmitted to our time, and to these might be added the 
names of other ladies in high life, many of whom would doubt- 
less have gladly subscribed the national covenant of 1638, had it 
been the practice for ladies to subscribe that document.^ 

* Baillie's Letters and Journals, vol. i., p. 21. t See p. 185. 

X Many of the subscribed copies of the national covenant, as sworn at that period, 
have been carefully examined by David Laing, Esq., Signet Library; and, from the 
absence of the names of ladies, it appears not to have been customary for ladies to 
swear and subscribe it. In describing some of the numerous copies of that cove- 
nant, signed in different parts of the country in 1638, he, however, took notice, some 
time ago, in a communication to the Society of Antiquaries, of one in the society's 
museum, which seems to be quite peculiar in having the names of several ladies. 
From the notarial attestations on the back of a great many persons, in the parish of 



16 INTRODUCTION TO 

In the reign of Charles II., the fidelity of the presbyterians 
was put to a more severe test than it had ever been before. 
Charles became a ruthless persecutor. Inclining at one time, in 
matters of religion, to popery, and at another to Hobbism, it was 
natural for him to persecute. Popery, the true antichrist, which 
puts enmity in the seed of the serpent against the seed of the 
woman, is essentially persecuting. Hobbism, which maintains 
that virtue and vice are created by the will of the civil magis- 
trate, and that the king's conscience is the standard for all the 
consciences of his subjects, just as the great clock rules all the 
lesser clocks of the town, is no less essentially persecuting. 
Whether, then, Charles is considered as a papist or a Hobbist, 
he was prompted by his creed to persecute. In addition to this, 
it is to be observed that the presbyterian church of Scotland had 
excited his irreconcilable hatred, not only from its being un- 
friendly to despotism, but from its strict discipline, the experi- 
ence of which in early life had made a lasting impression on his 
mind. All these things being considered, the motives inducing 
his determination, a determination from which he never swerved, 
to destroy the Scottish presbyterian church, are easily explained. 
To assist him in this work, a set of men, both statesmen and 
churchmen, pre-eminently unprincipled, of whom Middleton, Lau- 
derdale, and Sharp, may be considered as the representatives, 
were at his service. Many of these had sworn the " Solemn 
League and Covenant," and had been zealous for it in the palmy 
days when its champions walked in silver slippers. But they 
were too worldly-wise to strive against wind and tide. They 
were, in fact, just such men as Bunyan describes in his " Pil- 
grim's Progress," my Lord Turn-about, my Lord Time-server, 
Mr. Facing-both-ways, Mr. Anything, Mr. Two-tongues, Mr. 
Hold-the-world, Mr. Money-love, and Mr. Save-all. Such ser- 
vile agents, it is evident, were in no respect actuated, in persecu- 
ting the presbyterians, by motives of conscience, as some perse- 

Maybole, who adhered to the covenant, but were unable to write, he inferred that 
this copy had been signed in that district of Ayrshire. In the first line of the sig- 
natures toward the right-hand side, along with the names of Montrose, Lothian, 
Loudoun, and Cassillis, are those of Jeane Hamilton, evidently the sister of the 
marquis of Hamilton, and wife of the earl of Cassillis — and of Margaret Kennedy, 
their daughter, who afterward became the wife of Bishop Burnet. Lower down, 
toward the right hand of the parchment, are the names of other ladies, who can not 
now be so readily identified — Margaret Stewart, Jeane Stewart, Grizil Blair, Isa- 
bill Gimil, Helene Kennedy, Elizabeth Hewatt, Anna Stewart, Elizabeth Stewart, 
Dame Helene Bennett, and Janet Fergusone. Eor the information contained in this 
note I am indebted to the kindness of Mr. Laing, whose extensive acquaintance 
with Scottish history is so much at the service of others. 



THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 17 

cutors have been, but solely by corrupted and interested views. 
Had the king changed his religion every half year, they would 
have changed theirs, and have been equally zealous in persecu- 
ting all who refused to make a similar change. 

But this fiery ordeal, the faith, the devotedness, and the hero- 
ism, of the pious women of Scotland stood. We find them, in 
every station of life, maintaining their fidelity to their conscien- 
tious convictions in the midst of severe sufferings. With the 
ejected ministers they deeply sympathized ; and their sympathy 
with them they testified in many ways ; nor did they feel, or show 
much respect to, the intruded curates. This was true even as to 
the more ignorant of women in the lower ranks. Many of this 
class signalized themselves by their opposition to the intrusion 
of the curates, as in Irongray, where a body of them boldly as- 
sailed a party of the king's guard, who came to that parish with 
the view of promoting the intrusion of a curate into the place of 
their favorite ejected minister, Mr. John Welsh. " A party with 
some messengers," says Mr. John Blackadder, " was sent with a 
curate, to intimate that another curate was to enter the kirk for 
their ordinary. Some women of the parish hearing thereof be- 
fore, placed themselves in the kirkyard, and furnished themselves 
with their ordinary weapons of stones, whereof they gathered 
store, and thus, when the messengers and party of rascals with 
swords and pistols came, the women so maintained their ground, 
defending themselves under the kirk dike, that, after a hot skir- 
mish, the curate, messengers, and party without, not presuming 
to enter, did at length take themselves to retreat, with the honor- 
able blae marks they had got at that conflict."* Nor was this by 
any means a singular case, for the same writer adds : " Many 
such affronts did these prelates' curates meet with in their essays 
to enter kirks after that manner, especially by women, which was 
a testimony of general dislike and aversion to submit to them as 
their ministers." In a similar way does Kirkton speak. After 
stating that " the first transgressors of this kind were (as I re- 
member) the poor people of Irongray," and that " the next offend- 
ers were in Kirkcudbright, where some ten women were first in- 
carcerate in Edinburgh, and thereafter set with papers on their 
heads," he goes on to say : " But these were followed by, I be- 
lieve, a hundred congregations up and down the country, though 
the punishment became banishment to America, cruel whipping, 
and heavy fines." He, however, at the same time adds : " These 
extravagant practices of the rabble were no way approven by the 
* Blackadder's Memoirs, MS. copy in Advocates' Library. 



18 INTRODUCTION TO 

godly and judicious presbyterians ; yea, they were ordinarily the 
actions of the profane and ignorant ; but I think they were enough 
to demonstrate to the world what respect or affection the curates 
should find among their congregations."* 

This favorable disposition to the suffering cause was not, how- 
ever, limited to ignorant women in the lower ranks. It was par- 
taken of more largely, and displayed more intelligently, by the 
great body of well-informed women, in the lower and middle ranks, 
and even by many of them in the higher, to some of whom the 
reader is introduced in this volume. At field-meetings they were 
often present. " Not many gentlemen of estates," says Kirkton, 
" durst come, but many ladies, gentlewomen, and commons, came 
in great multitudes."! The agents appointed by the government 
throughout the country, for putting in execution tho laws for sup- 
pressing conventicles and other " ecclesiastical disorders," had 
upon all occasions represented to the privy council that women 
were " the chief fomenters of these disorders."! Besides sup- 
porting the persecuted cause of presbytery themselves, these 
ladies, by their intelligent piety and firmness of mind, had a pow- 
erful influence in infusing the principles of noncomfority into 
their husbands, and in sustaining on many occasions their waver- 
ing resolution. Archbishop Sharp complained heavily of this, 
and it gave peculiar energy and bitterness to his hatred of pres- 
byterian women, whom he was in the habit of branding with ev- 
ery term of opprobrium and contempt. In a letter to a lady, who 
acquired notoriety in her day by the vigorous suppression of con- 
venticles, and of whom we shall afterward speak more particu- 
larly,|| he says : "I am glad to find your husband, a gentleman 
noted for his loyalty to the king, and affection to the church, is so 
happy as to have a consort of the same principles and inclina- 
tions for the public settlement, who has given proof of her aver- 
sion to join in society with separatists, and partaking of that sin, 
to which so many of that sex do tempt their husbands in this evil 
time, when schism, sedition, and rebellion, are gloried in, though 
Christianity does condemn them as the greatest crimes. "§ 

* Kirkton's History, pp. 162, 163. 

t Ibid., pp. 352, 353. "A vast multitude," says the editor of Kirkton, " of the fe- 
male sex in Scotland, headed by women of high rank, such as the duchess of Ham- 
ilton, Ladies Rothes, Wigton, Loudon, Colvill, &c, privately encouraged or openly 
followed the field preachers." 

\ Register of Acts of Privy Council, January 23, 1684. 

j| This was Anne Keith, a daughter of Keith of Benholm (brother to Earl Mari- 
scliall), and, by the courtesy of the time, styled Lady Methven, her husband being 
Patrick Smith of Methven. Sharp's letter to her is dated St. Andrews, March 27, 1679. 

$ Kirkton's History, pp. 355-361. 



THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 19 

The unyielding steadfastness displayed by so many of the wo- 
men of Scotland in the cause of nonconformity was a perplexing 
case to the government. Imprisonment they saw would not rem- 
edy the evil, for they could not find prisons to hold a tithe of 
those who were guilty. The method they adopted in making 
the husband responsible for the religious sentiments of his wife, 
and in punishing him, though a conformist himself, for her non- 
formity, if not more effectual, proved, as may easily be conceived, 
a prolific source of domestic contention and misery. " Many hus- 
bands here," says a writer of that period, in relating the sufferings 
of Galloway and Nithsdale in 1666, " who yield to the full length, 
are punished by fining, cess, and quarter, for their wives' non- 
obedience, and ye know, sir, that it is hard. There are many wives 
who will not be commanded by their husbands in lesser things 
than this ; but I must tell you this hath occasioned much conten- 
tion, fire, and strife, in families, and brought it to this height, that 
some wives are forced to flee from their husbands, and forced to 
seek a shelter elsewhere, and so the poor good man is doubly 
punished for all his conformity."* Another writer of that period 
also says : " When these delating courts! came through the coun- 
try, husbands were engaged to bring their wives to the courts, 
and to the kirk, or to put them away, and never to own them 
again, which many of them did. So after the women had wan- 
dered abroad, and when they came home again, their husbands 
and other relations took them by force to the kirk. Some of 
them fell a sound when they were taken off the horses' backs ; 
others of them gave a testimony that enraged the curate."^ Find- 
ing, after the persecution had continued for more than twenty 
years, that the zeal of the ladies against prelacy was by no means 
abated, and that the methods hitherto adopted in meeting the evil 
had proved singularly unsuccessful, the government came to the 
resolution of meeting it by severely fining the husbands of such 
ladies as withdrew from their parish churches. Such a punish- 
ment, they imagined, was better calculated than any other to 
strike terror, and to make husbands active in their endeavors to 
persuade their wives to attend the church. Many husbands were 
thus fined in heavy sums for their wives' irregularities. The 
case of Sir William Scot, of Harden, was very severe. His wife, 

* Wodrow MSS.. vol. xxvii., 4to, No. 6. 

t These were circuit courts, held in various parts of the country, for discovering 
and punishing nonconformists. 

$ An account of the sufferings in Tunnergirth and other parishes in Annan, Wod- 
row MSS., vol. xxxvii., 4to, No. 14. 



20 INTRODUCTION TO 

Christian Boyd, sixth daughter of Lady Boyd, Avho is noticed in 
this volume, having declined to attend the curate, Sir William 
was on that account fined by the privy council in November, 
1683, in the sum of fifteen hundred pounds sterling,* and long 
imprisoned in the castle of Edinburgh. He was forced to com- 
promise and pay the fine, which in those days was an enormous 
sum. He desired the privy council to relieve him of responsi- 
bility for his wife's delinquencies in future, as she would on no 
consideration engage to hear the curates. But the council held 
that husbands were to be accounted masters of their wives de jure, 
whatever might be the case de facto. Lady Scot was under the 
necessity of leaving her husband, and she retired into England, 
and died at Newcastle.! 

But the making husbands responsible for the conformity of their 
wives, and thus throwing a bone of contention into families, was 
only a small part of the sufferings endured by many nonconform- 
ing women of that period, on account of their principles. The 
sufferings of a few and only a few of them are recorded in this 
volume. None of our female worthies were indeed subjected to 
the torture of the boot or of the thumbscrew, though some of them 
were threatened with the former punishment.! But tne > r w ere 
cruelly tortured in other ways. In the parish of Auchinleck, a 
young woman, for refusing the oath of abjuration, had her finger 
burned with fire-matches till the white bone appeared. In the 
same parish, Major White's soldiers took a young woman in a 
house, and put a fiery coal into the palm of her hand, to make 
her tell what was asked her.|| Hundreds of women were fined 
in large sums of money. Hundreds of them were imprisoned. 
Hundreds of them were banished to his majesty's plantations, and 
discharged from ever returning to this kingdom, under the pain 
of death, to be inflicted on them without mercy ; and before being 
shipped off, they were in many cases burned on the cheek, by 

* Fountainhall's Decisions, vol. i , p. 243. 

t Wodrow MSS-, vol. xl., folio, No. 3. 

t Mrs Crawford, Mrs. Kello, a rich widow, and Mrs. Duncan, a minister's widow, 
were so threatened. After Mr. Mitchell's attempt on the life of Archbishop Sharp, 
they were imprisoned, under suspicion of knowing who the intended assassin was ; 
and, on being brought before the council, and strictly interrogated concerning houses 
that lodged whigs or kept conventicles, or if they knew the name of the assassin, 
they were, on refusing to answer, threatened with the boot ; and the last of these 
ladies would one day have actually endured the torture, had it not been for the duke 
of Rothes, who told the council that it was not proper for gentlewomen to wear 
boots. — Kirkton's History, pp. 283, 284. Dalziel also threatened Marion Harvey 
with the boot. 

|| Wodrow MSS., vol. xxxvii., 4to, No. 1. This paper was communicated to 
Wodrow by Mr. Alexander Shields. 



THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 21 

the hands of the hangman, with a red-hot iron ; while some of 
them, being too old to banish, after lying in prison till their per- 
secutors were weary of confining them, and grudged the expense 
of supporting them, were whipped, burned on the cheek, and dis- 
missed.* Hundreds of them, to escape imprisonment, banish- 
ment, and other hardships, were under the necessity of leav- 
ing their houses in the cold winter season, and of lodging in 
rocks and caves, amid frost and snow. And not to mention those 
women who were put to cruel deaths, hundreds more, even when 
the hostility of the government was not directed against them- 
selves personally, were greatly tried, from the sufferings to which 
their husbands, from their opposition to or noncompliance with 
the oppressive measures of the government, were subjected. In 
how many instances, while the husband was compelled to flee 
for safety, did the wife suffer the execrable barbarity of savage 
troopers, who, visiting her house, would abuse and threaten her 
in the very spirit and language of hell ; seize upon her corn and 
meal, and throw them into the dunghill, or otherwise destroy 
them ; plunder her of her poultry, butter, cheese, and bedclothes ; 
shoot or carry away her sheep and cattle, reducing her and her 
family to great distress ! If the husband was lined, intercom- 
mimed, imprisoned, tortured, banished, forfeited in life and prop- 
erty, or put to death, the wife suffered ; and who can calculate 
the mental agony and temporal privations which many a wife 
with her children then experienced, in consequence of the injus- 
tice and cruelty perpetrated upon her husband ? Such were the 
sufferings endured for conscience' sake during that dark period, 
by thousands of the tender sex in our unhappy country. 

Never, indeed, did a severer period of trial pass over the church 
of Scotland, than during the persecution. Previously she had 
fought, with various success, many a battle against kings and 
statesmen. But even when she had sustained defeat, she again 
mustered her forces, and by persevering effort recovered the 
ground she had lost. During the persecution it was different. 
It was all disaster. She was not indeed destroyed, which was 
what her enemies aimed at. But she was laid prostrate, a bleed- 
ing and a helpless victim. All she could do was to exercise 
constancy, patience, and fortitude, under the fury of her enemies. 
Had the period of suffering been of short duration, these graces 
it would have been easier to exercise. But it lasted for nearly a 
whole generation. It was " The Twenty-eight Years' Conflict," 
and a conflict of a very different sort from " The Ten Years' Con- 

* Registry of Acts of Privy Council, July 14, 1685. 



22 INTRODUCTION TO 

flict" of our own day. The latter was running with the footmen 
in the land of peace ; the former was contending with horses in 
the swelling of Jordan. 

It is extremely gratifying to find that our countrywomen, who 
submitted to such sufferings in the cause of presbytery, were gen- 
erally distinguished for sincere and enlightened piety. Apart from 
this, knowledge, zeal, courage, and self-sacrifice, even to the 
death, are of little estimation in the sight of God, and of little ad- 
vantage to the possessor. " Though I give my body to be burned, 
and have not charity (love), it profiteth me nothing." But this 
charity, this love in its most extensive sense, embracing both God 
and man, was the predominating element in the character of those 
of whom we now speak. Their piety was indeed the true rea- 
son, and not obstinacy or fanaticism, as their enemies calumni- 
ously affirmed, why they submitted to suffer what they did for 
matters of religion. The fear of God, and respect to his authority, 
were their governing principles ; and so long as these principles 
held the sway in their understandings, consciences, and hearts, they 
could not, at the bidding of any man, renounce what they believed 
to be the truth of God, and profess as truth what they believed 
to be a lie, whatever it might cost them. Nor were the persecu- 
tors ignorant of the fact that the sufferers were generally distin- 
guished for godliness. They knew it well, it resembling in dis- 
position the first murderer Cain, who was of the wicked one, and 
slew his brother because his own works were evil and his broth- 
er's righteous, it was chiefly this which prompted them to hate 
and murder their inoffensive victims. So well did they know it, 
that they regarded irreligion or profanity as sufficient to clear a 
man or woman of all suspicion of the taint of presbyterianism. 
As a proof of this, we may quote the following passage from Kirk- 
ton's history, in reference to what took place in the parish of 
Wistoun, in Clydesdale : " The church," says he, " being vacant, 
and a curate to enter, the people rose in a tumult, and with stones 
and batons chased the curate and his company out of the field. A 
lady in that parish was blamed as a ringleader in the tumult, and 
brought before the council ; she came to the bar, and after her 
libel was read, the chancellor asked if these accnsations were 
true or not. She answered briefly, ' The devil one word was 
true in them.' The councillors looked one upon another ; and 
the chancellor replied, ' Well, madam, I adjourn you for fifteen 
days'— which never yet had an end, and there her persecution 
ended : such virtue there was in a short curse, fully to satisfy 
such governors ; and many thought it good policy to demonstrate 



THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 23 

themselves to be honest profane people, that they might vindi- 
cate themselves of the dangerous suspicion of being presbyte- 
rians."* 

In our sketches we have included several ladies, who, though 
not sufferers during the persecution, either in their own persons 
or in their friends, sympathized with and relieved the sufferers. 
Nor was it only from such ladies as the duchess of Hamilton, the 
duchess of Rothes, and others who favored the persecuted prin- 
ciples, that the evil-entreated covenanters met with sympathy 
and relief, but even from many ladies who, though not attached 
to the presbyterian cause themselves, were enemies to intolerance 
and persecution. Many of the wanderers could bear the same 
testimony to the generosity and humanity of woman, which is 
borne by a celebrated traveller :f " To a woman," says he, " I 
never addressed myself, in the language of decency and friend- I 
ship, without receiving a decent and friendly answer. If I was ' 
hungry or thirsty, wet or sick, they did not hesitate, like men, to 
perform a generous action. In so free and kind a manner did 
they contribute to my relief, that, if I was dry, I drank the sweet- 
est draught ; and if hungry, I ate the coarsest morsel with a 
double relish." Of this, so numerous were the examples that 
were constantly occurring during the persecution, as to corrobo- 
rate the evidence upon which the poetj pronounces compassion 
as peculiarly characteristic of the female heart : — 

" Wherever grief and want retreat, 
In woman they compassion find ; 
She makes the female breast her seat, 
And dictates mercy to the mind." 

But true as this eulogium on the female character may be in 
the main, instances are to be met with in which even the heart 
of woman has become steeled against every humane feeling ; and 
such instances, though happily of rare occurrence, were to be 
met with during the period of the persecution. The countess of 
Perth was one of these instances. Her treatment of the wife of 
Alexander Hume, portioner of Hume, in the close of the year 
1682, was revoltingly atrocious. Mr. Hume was a nonconform- 
ist ; and, though nothing criminal was proved against him, he 
was condemned to die at the market-cross of Edinburgh upon the 
29th of December. He was offered his life if he would take the 
test, which he refused to do. By the interest of his friends at 
court, a remission was, however, procured from the king, which 

* Kirkton's History, pp 354, 355. t Mr. Ledyard. t Crabbe. 



24 INTRODUCTION TO 

came down to Edinburgh four or five days before his execution ; 
but it was kept up by the earl of Perth, a relentless persecutor, 
who was then chancellor. On the day of Hume's execution, his 
wife went to the chancellor's lady, and begged her, in such 
moving terms as might have softened even a cold and hard heart, 
to interpose for her husband's life, urging that she had five small 
children. But the heart of the countess was harder than the 
nether millstone. She had no more feeling for the afflicted wife 
and her children than if they had been so many brute beasts. 
Not only did she refuse to comply with her prayer, but with in- 
fernal cruelty, barbed and venomed the refusal with language so 
coarsely savage as is hardly to be repeated. Her answer was, 
" I have no more regard to you than to a bitch and five whelps !"* 

Lady Methven, formerly referred to, is another instance. To 
put down a large field conventicle on her husband's ground, she 
boldly marched forth, armed with a gun and sword, at the head 
of her vassals, swearing by the God of heaven that she would 
sooner sacrifice her life than allow the rebellious whigs to hold 
their rebellious meeting on his ground. But this intrepid energy, 
for which the enemies of the covenanters have held her up as a 
heroine, was nothing more than animal courage, the mere effect 
of iron nerves. From her letters, it is evident, if we are to judge 
from the oaths with which they are interlarded, that she was a 
profane, godless woman ; and it is no less evident from them that 
inveterate malignity to the covenanters was her impelling princi- 
ple. In a letter to her husband, then at London with the marquis 
of Montrose, dated Methven Wood, October 15, 1678, she thus 
describes her exploits : — 

" My Precious Love : A multitude of men and women, from 
east, west, and south, came the 13th day of this October to hold a 
field conventicle, two bows'-draught above our church ; they had 
their tent set up before the sun upon your ground. I seeing them 
flocking to it, sent through your ground, and charged them to re- 
pair to your brother David, the bailie, and me, to the Castle hill, 
where we had but sixty armed men : your brother with drawn 
sword and bent pistol, I with the light horseman's piece bent, on 
my left arm, and a drawn tuck in my right hand, all your ser- 
vants well armed, marched forward, and kept the one half of 
them fronting with the other, that were guarding their minister 
and their tent, which is their standard. That near party that we 
yoked with, most of them were St. Johnston's! people ; many of 

* Her answer is not recorded in Wodrow's History (vol. iii., p. 417), but it is given 
in his MSS., vol. xxxvii., 4to, No. 31. t Perth. 



THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 25 

them had no will to be known, but rode off to see what we would 
do. They marched toward Busbie : we marched be-west them 
and gained ground, before they could gather in a body. They 
sent off a party of an hundred men to see what we meant, to hin- 
der them to meet. We told them, if they would not go from the 
parish of Methven presently, it should be a bluddie day ; for I 
protested, and your brother, before God, we would ware our lives 
upon them before they should preach in our regallitie or parish. 
They said they would preach. We charged them either to fight 
or fly. They drew to a council amongst themselves what to do : 
at last, about two hours in the afternoon, they would go away if 
we would let the body that was above the church, with the tent, 
march freely after them ; we were content, knowing they were 
ten times as many as we were, and our advantage was keeping 
the one half a mile from the other, by marching in order betwixt 
them. They seeing we were desperate, marched our the Pow, 
and so we went to the church, and heard a feared minister preach. 
They have sworn not to stand with such an affront, but resolve 
to come the next Lord's day ; and I, in the Lord's strength, intend 
to accost them with all that will come to assist us. 1 have caused 
your officer warn a solemn court of vassals, tenants, and all within 
our power, to meet on Thursday, where I intend, if God will, to 
be present, and there to order them, in God and our king's name, 
to convene well armed to the kirkyard on sabbath morning by 
eight hours, where your brother and I, with all our servant-men, 
and others we can make, shall march to them, and, if the God of 
heaven will, they shall either fight or go out of our parish.* .... 
My blessed love, comfort yourself in this, that, if the fanatics 
should chance to kill me, it shall not be for naught. I was 
wounded for our gracious king, and now, in the strength of the 
Lord God of heaven, I '11 hazard my person with the men I may 
command, before these rebels rest where ye have power. Sore 
I miss you, but now more than ever This is the first oppo- 
sition that they have rencountered, so as to force them to flee out 
of a parish. God grant it be good hansell ! There would be 
no fear of it if we were all steel to the back. My precious, I 
am so transported with zeal to beat the whigs, that I almost for- 
got to tell you my lord marquis of Montrose hath two virtuous 
ladies to his sisters, and it is one of the loveliest sights in all 
Scotland, their nunnery." 

This letter is dated " Methven Wood, the 15th instant, 1678."f 

* In another letter to her husband, she says : " They are an ignorant, wicked 
pack; the Lord God clear the nation of them!" t Kirkton's Hist., pp. 355-361. 
3 



26 INTRODUCTION. 

About a year after this, Lady Methven met with a melancholy 
death. She fell off her horse, and her brains were dashed out, 
upon the very spot where she opposed persons going to that 
meeting, namely, at the southwest end of Methven Wood.* 

Of a very different character were the ladies whose memoirs 
we have attempted. So far from hating, maligning, and adding 
to the hardships of the persecuted, they protected and relieved 
them, and in many cases shared in their sufferings. They were 
indeed distinguished by general excellence of character, and are 
entitled to both the grateful remembrance and imitation of pos- 
terity. They form a part of the great cloud of witnesses with 
which we are encompassed. Though belonging to past genera- 
tions, whose bodies are now sleeping in the dust, and whose 
spirits have gone to the eternal world, they yet speak. By their 
piety toward God, not less than their benevolence toward man ; 
by the exemplary part they acted in every relation of life — as 
daughters, as sisters, as mothers ; by their liberality in supporting 
the ordinances of the gospel, and in encouraging its faithful min- 
isters ; by the magnanimity with which they suffered either per- 
sonally or relatively in the cause of truth, often rivalling the most 
noble examples of Christian heroism to be found in the church's 
history — they become instructors to the living generation in pas- 
sing through this scene of temptation and trial. They have es- 
pecially, by the magnanimity with which they suffered in the 
cause of truth, emphatically taught us the important principle 
that we are in all things and at all times to do what is right ; and 
as to the disapprobation, opposition, and persecution of men, in 
whatever way manifested, or to whatever extent, we are to let 
that take its chance — a principle, the importance of which it is 
difficult to over-estimate ; which lies at the foundation of all that 
is great and good in character ; which has enabled the greatest 
and the best of men, by the blessing of God, to achieve the great 
purposes they have formed for advancing the highest interests 
of mankind, and upon which it is necessary for the good soldier 
of Christ to act in every age — in an age in which the church 
enjoys tranquillity, as well as when she suffers persecution. 

* Wodrow MSS-, vol. xxxiii., folio, No. 143. 



THE 



LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 



LADY ANNE CUNNINGHAM, 

MARCHIONESS OF HAMILTON. 

Lady Anne Cunningham was the fourth daughter of James, 
seventh earl of Glencairn, by his first wife Margaret, second 
daughter of Sir Colin Campbell of Glenurchy.* Her ancestors 
on the father's side were among the first of the Scottish peers 
who embraced the reformed doctrine. In 1640, her great-great- 
grandfather William, fourth earl of Glencairn, and her great- 
grandfather, then Lord Kilmaurs, afterward fifth earl of Glencairn, 
appear among the converts of the reformed faith. Her great- 
grandfather in particular, whose piety and benevolence procured 
him the honorable appellation of " the good earl,"f was an ardent 
and steady promoter of the Reformation, for. which he was emi- 
nently qualified by his superior learning and abilities, as well as 
by the influence of his high station ; and he carefully instructed 
his children in its principles. He regularly attended the ser- 
mons of John Knox, on the reformer's returning to Scotland, in 
1554; and in 1556, he invited him to administer the sacrament 
of the Lord's Supper after the manner of the reformed church, 
in his baronial mansion of Finlayston, in the parish of Kilmal- 
colm, when he himself, his countess, and two of their, sons, with 
a number of their friends, partook of that solemn ordinance .J 

* Douglas's Peerage of Scotland, vol. i., p. 636. 

t There is a portrait of this nobleman in Pinkerton's Scottish Gallery of Portraits, 
vol. ii. 

X M'Crie's Life of Knox, vol. i., p. 178. Knox's History, Wodrow Society edi- 
tion, vol. i., p. 250. " The silver cups which were used by Knox on this occasion 
are still carefully preserved ; and the use of them was given at the time of dis- 
pensing the sacrament in the parish church of Kilmalcolm, so long as the Glen- 
cairn family resided at Finlayston." 



23 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

He also assisted the reformers by his pen, being the author of a 
satirical poem upon the Roman catholic monks, entitled, " An 
Epistle Direct from the Holy Hermit of Allarit* to his Brethren 
the Grey Friars." Nor did he shrink from drawing the sword 
for their protection. In 1559, when the reformers took up arms 
at Perth to defend themselves from the queen-regent, who had 
collected an army and had advanced to Perth, to avenge the de- 
struction of the popish images by the populace of that town, he 
raised twelve hundred horse and thirteen hundred foot in the 
west, and the passes being occupied, conducted them through the 
mountains, travelling night and day till they reached Perth; which 
proved a seasonable aid to the reformers, and by the consternation 
with which it inspired the queen-regent, prevented the effusion 
of blood. This nobleman often visited Knox on his death-bed ; 
and he died in 1574. 

Lady Anne's father, James, seventh earl of Glencairn, was 
also a friend to the liberties and religion of his country. He 
was one of those noblemen, who, when the duke of Lennox, an 
emissary of the court of France, had acquired a complete influ- 
ence over James VI., soon after his assuming the reins of gov- 
ernment, and had effected an entire change in the court, filling it 
with persons devoted to popery and arbitrary power, resolved to 
take possession of the king's person, and removing Lennox, and 
another favorite, the earl of Arran, from him, to take upon them- 
selves the direction of public affairs. With this view, on meeting 
with the king returning from hunting in Athol, several of them 
invited him to Ruthven castle, where they effected their purpose ; 
and hence this enterprise was called the Raid of Ruthven. 

Of the early life of Lady Anne we possess no information. In 
the beginning of the year 1603, she was married to Lord James, 
the son and heir-presumptive of John, first marquis of Hamilton. 
By her marriage contract, dated 30th January, 1603, which re- 
ceived the consent of both their fathers, the marriage portion is 
forty thousand merks, and the yearly jointure fifty-six chalders 
of victual, and five hundred pounds of money-rent. f 

Lady Hamilton inherited from her father's family an ardent 
zeal for presbytery. During the first part of her life an almost 
continued contest existed between James VI. and the church of 
Scotland, in reference to that form of church government. As 

* Thomas Dnuchtie of Allarit or Loretto, near Musselburgh. This person wag 
the founder of the Chapel of our Lady of Loretto, 1533. Knox's History. Wod- 
row Society edition, vol. i., pp. 72, 75. 

t Descriptive Catalogue of tbe Hamilton Papers in the Miscellany of the Mait- 
laud Club, vol. iv., p. 201. 



MARCHIONESS OF HAMILTON. 29 

has been said in the introduction, James commenced that strug- 
gle for absolute power, which was resolutely persevered in by his 
son and his two grandsons ; and to reach his purpose he deemed 
it necessary to undermine the presbyterian government of the 
church of Scotland. With his usual profanity, he asserted that 
monarchy and presbytery agreed as well as God and the devil. 
No assertion could be more unfounded. It can not indeed be 
denied that the republicanism of presbyterian church government 
is unfriendly to absolute or despotic monarchy. The fundamen- 
tal principle of presbytery — that spiritual power is lodged exclu- 
sively in the church courts, uncontrolled by the civil magistrate 
— greatly limits the power of monarchs, saying to them when 
they reach the borders of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, " Hitherto 
shalt thou come, and no farther," and naturally leads men to con- 
clude that, by parity of reason, temporal power should be lodged 
in a parliament. But that presbytery is hostile to limited mon- 
archy, is disproved by the whole of its history in Scotland ; for 
no body of people was ever more devoted to the throne than the 
presbyterians ; and indeed they often carried their loyalty to a 
reprehensible and extravagant excess. It was not, however, a 
limited but an absolute monarchy on the erection of which James's 
heart was set ; and seeing clearly enough that presbytery was 
the enemy of such a monarchy, he made every effort to overthrow 
it, and to introduce prelacy, which he well knew would be a 
more effectual instrument in advancing his design. These efforts 
he was not permitted to make without opposition. A body of 
ministers, respectable for number, and still more respectable for 
their talents, piety, and zeal, resolutely and perseveringly resisted 
him till the close of his life. They maintained, that by attempt- 
ing to impose upon the church the form of government and mode 
of worship which were most accordant with his inclinations, and 
by endeavoring to control her in her administration, he was in- 
vading the prerogative of Christ, the sole king and head of the 
church, who alone had the right to settle the form of her govern- 
ment, and by whose authority alone she was to be guided in her 
administration. By threats, bribes, imprisonment, and banish- 
ment, James labored hard to get them to yield to his wishes ; but 
animated by a high sense of duty, they were not to be overborne, 
and largely imbued with the spirit of martyrs, they preferred 
enduring the utmost effects of his royal wrath, rather than make 
the unhallowed surrender. So much importance did they attach 
to their principles, as to deem them worthy even of the sacrifice 
of their lives. " We have been even waiting with joyfulness," 
3* 



30 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

said one of them, " to give the last testimony of our blood in con- 
firmation thereof, if it should please our God to be so favorable as 
to honor us with that dignity."* It is the courage, zeal, and self- 
sacrifice, with which this party contended for the rights and lib- 
erties of the church, during the reigns of James VI. and Charles 
I., that imparts to this portion of our ecclesiastical history its prin- 
cipal charm. 

To this party the marchioness of Hamilton adhered with great 
zeal, actuated by sympathy with the principles contended for, as 
well as by sympathy with the character of the men themselves, 
who, besides being the most gifted, were the most pious, active, 
and faithful ministers of the church of Scotland, in their day. 

Her husband, the marquis of Hamilton, was not equally stead- 
fast with herself in maintaining the liberties of the church. Fa- 
cile and ambitious, he was induced, from a desire to please his 
sovereign, to become an advocate for conformity to the five arti- 
cles of Perth, and to exert his influence to obtain their ratifica- 
tion in the Scottish parliament of 1621, where he was his majes- 
ty's high commissioner. This nobleman was cut off in the prime 
of life, having died at London on the 2d of March, 1625, in the 
thirty-sixth year of his age.f " Small regret," says Calderwood, 
" was made for his death, for the service he made at the last par- 
liament." 

The marchioness survived the marquis many years, during 
which time she was eminently useful as an encourager of the 
faithful ministers of the gospel, whom she was ever ready to 
shield from persecution, and to countenance in every way com- 
petent to her. When Mr. Robert Boyd, of Trochrig, had, a few 
months after his being admitted minister of Paisley, been driven 
out of that town by the mob, who showered upon him " stones 
and dirt" — Paisley being then, as Row describes it, " a nest of 
papists"^ — she was earnestly desirous to take that great and good 
man under her protection, and invited him to accept of the charge 
of the parish of Cambuslang, which was at that time vacant. Mr. 
James Bruce, writing to him from Glasgow, in October, 1626, 
says : " The parish of Cambuslang is now vacant, and the lady 
marchioness is earnestly desirous to have you there. Her joint- 

* These are the words of Mr. John Welsh, when a prisoner in Blackness castle, 
in reference to himself and his brethren who was proceeded against by the govern- 
ment for holding a general Assembly at Aberdeen in July, 1605, in opposition to the 
wishes of the monarch. Select Biographies, printed for the Wodrow Society, voL 
i., p. 23. 

t Calderwood's History, vol. vii., pp. 469, 489, 630. 

t How's History of the Kirk of Scotland, p. 438. 



MARCHIONESS OF HAMILTON. 31 

ure lies there : it is within three miles of Glasgow, has a reason- 
able stipend, besides the lady's pension, which she will rather 
augment than diminish. You will live easier, and at more peace 
there, than at Paisley ; you will have the lady marchioness's com- 
pany, which is very desirable. This I leave to your considera- 
tion, and the Lord's direction." An end, however, was put to this 
matter by the growing illness of Boyd, which took him to Edin- 
burgh, to consult with physicians ; and on reaching the capital 
his sickness increased, till it terminated in his death, on the 5th 
of January, 1627.* 

The name of the marchioness stands favorably connected with 
that memorable revival of religion which took place at the kirk 
of Shotts, on the 21st of June, 1630, the Monday after the cele- 
bration of the Lord's Supper. Indeed, that revival may be said 
to be directly traceable to the piety of this lady, who was forward 
to embrace every opportunity of bringing within the reach of 
others the blessed gospel which she herself so highly prized ; 
and it originated in a circumstance apparently incidental — the 
breaking down of her carriage on the road, at Shotts. How im- 
portant the results, for either good or evil to mankind, which, un- 
der the government of Infinite Wisdom, have been produced by 
the most trivial events ! The sight of the spider's web and the 
pigeon's nest at the entrance of the cave in which Mohammed 
concealed himself diverted his pursuers from searching it, and, 
saving the life of the false prophet, contributed to entail for ages 
upon a large part of the world the curse of the Mohammedan su- 
perstition ; and in the Reformation throughout Europe, incidents 
equally insignificant have, on the other hand, been big with con- 
sequences the most beneficial to mankind. The circumstance 
of the breaking down of the marchioness's carriage, seemingly 
casual as it was, resulted in some hundreds of immortal beings 
experiencing that blessed change of heart which unites the soul 
to God, and which issues in everlasting salvation. The particu- 
lars, in so far as she was concerned, were these : As the road to 
Edinburgh from the west lay by the kirk of Shotts, she frequently 
passed that way in travelling from the place of her residence to 
the capital, and on such occasions she received, in different in- 
stances, civilities from Mr. Home,f minister of the parish. At 
one time, in particular, when, on her passing through Shotts, ac- 
companied with some other ladies, the carriage in which they 

* Wodrow's Life of Robert Boyd, pp. 239, 240. 

t Gillies, in his Historical Collections, calls him Mr. Hance, but this is a mistake. 
Both Livingstone and Wodrow give his name as in the text. 



32 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

were riding broke down, in the neighborhood of the manse. Mr. 
Home, on learning the accident, kindly invited them to alight 
and remain all night in his house, as they were at a considerable 
distance from any convenient place of entertainment. Having 
accepted his invitation, they observed during their stay that, be- 
sides its inconvenient situation, the manse stood much in need of 
being repaired ; and the marchioness, in return for his attentions, 
erected for him a new manse, in a more agreeable situation, and 
with superior accommodations. On receiving so substantial a 
favor, Mr. Home waited upon her to express his obligations, and 
desired to know if there was anything he could do by which to 
testify his gratitude. All she asked was that he would be kind 
enough to allow her to name the ministers he should have with 
him as his assistants at the celebration of the Lord's Supper. 
This request he cordially granted. She accordingly named some 
of the most distinguished ministers of the day, Mr. Robert Bruce, 
Mr. David Dickson, and some others, who had been remarkably 
successful as instruments in bringing many to the saving knowl- 
edge of the truth. The report that such celebrated men were to 
assist at the communion at that place soon circulated extensively 
through the country ; and a vast multitude, attracted by their fame, 
assembled from all quarters, many of them of eminent piety, among 
whom were the marchioness herself, and other ladies of rank, 
who attended at her invitation.* 

The solemnity to which she was the means of bringing these 
ministers, and of gathering together so great a crowd of people, 
was accompanied in a very signal manner with the Divine bles- 
sing. For several days before, much time was spent in social 
prayer. During all the days of the solemn occasion the minis- 
ters were remarkably assisted. The devout who attended were 
in a more than ordinary degree refreshed and edified ; and so 
largely was the spirit of grace and supplication poured out upon 
them, that, after being dismissed on the sabbath, they spent the 
whole night, in different companies, in prayer. On the Monday 
morning, the ministers, understanding how they had been en- 
gaged, and perceiving them, instead of returning to their homes, 
still lingering at the place, as if unwilling to depart from a spot 
which they had found in their experience to be as it were the 
gate of heaven, agreed to have sermon on that dav, though it was 
not usual, at that time, to preach on the Monday after the dispen- 
sation of the Lord's Supper. The minister whose turn it was to 

* Wodrow'a Analecta, vol. i., p. 271 ; Gillies" a Historical Collections, vol. i., pp. 
309, 310. 



MARCHIONESS OF HAMILTON. 33 

officiate having become unwell, the work of addressing the peo- 
ple was, at the suggestion of Lady Culross, laid upon Mr. John 
Livingstone, then a young man, and chaplain to the countess of 
Wigton. Livingstone had before preached at Shotts, and had 
found more liberty in preaching there than at other places ; but 
from the great multitude of all ranks assembled on that occasion, 
he became so diffident that, when alone in the fields in the morn- 
ing, he began to think of stealing away rather than address the 
people. " But," says he, " I durst not so far distrust God, and so 
went to sermon and got good assistance. I had about an hour 
and a half upon the points I had meditated on, Ezekiel xxxvi. 
25,26 : ' Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall 
be clean : from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I 
cleanse you. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit 
will I put within you ; and I will take away the stony heart out 
of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh;' and in end, 
offering to close with some words of exhortation, I was led on 
about an hour's time in a strain of exhortation and warning with 
such liberty and melting of heart as I never had the like in pub- 
lic in all my life."* And such was the effect, that, as Mr. Flem- 
ing observes, in his " Fulfilling of the Scriptures," " near five 
hundred had at that time a discernible change wrought on them, 
of whom most proved lively Christians afterward. It was the 
sowing of a seed through Clydesdale, so as many of the most 
eminent Christians in that country could date either their conver- 
sion or some remarkable confirmation in their case from that 
day."f After this the practice of preaching on the Monday fol- 
lowing the sacrament became general. 

* Life of Mr. John Livingstone, in Select Biographies, printed for the Wodrow 
Society, vol. i., p. 138. 

t It may not be uninteresting to quote some notices respecting this communion, 
given by Wodrow : — 

"April 24, 1710. This day being at the Shotts. and discoursing with Mr. Law, 
the minister, he tells me that the sermon was in the west end of the churchyard. 
He let me see the end of the Craiy;s to which, it is said. Mr. Livingstone went up to 
study, the morning before he preached, as the tradition is. Another should hnve 
preached on the Monday, but he fell indisposed. It was the lady Culross, who was 
there, and had special intimacy with Mr. Livingstone, that put the ministers upon 
employing him. The minister's name, at that time, was Mr. Home, a man of an 
easy temper, and no persecutor.'' And, after stating that the marchioness of Han il- 
ton had conferred some particular favor on Mr. Home; that Mr. Home allowed her 
to name the ministers he should have with him at the communion (Mr. Dickson, Mr. 
Bruce, and others), who all enme, with a great many Christians, at the lady's invita- 
tion, who was herself an excellent woman — Wodrow adds that " he (Mr. Law) hrars 
the particular occasion of the first sensible motion among the people was this : In 
the time of Mr. Livingstone's sermon there was a soft shower of rain, and when the 
people began to stickle about, he said to this purpose, ' What a mercy is it that the 
Lord sifts that rain through these heavens on us, and does not rain down fire and 



34 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

The marchioness of Hamilton was personally known to Mr. 
John Livingstone ; and in his " Memorable Characteristics" he 
has given her a place among " some of the professors in the 
church of Scotland of his acquaintance who were eminent for 
grace and gifts."* From his " Life" we also learn that whatever 
influence she had with the court at London, she was well inclined 
to use it for the protection of the persecuted nonconformists. He 
informs us that, after he himself, Mr. Robert Blair, and others of 
his brethren in Ireland, had been deposed, in May, 1632, by the 
bishop of Down, and when Mr. Blair went to London to repre- 
sent their cause to the government, he himself, who was to follow 
Mr. Blair, went previously to Scotland, with the design of procu- 
ring letters from the lady marchioness of Hamilton and other per- 
sons of rank, to some of their friends at court, vindicating him 
and his brethren from the charge of stirring up the people to ecsta- 
sies and enthusiasm, and requesting for them toleration to preach 
the gospel notwithstanding their nonconformity.! 

During the stirring period when the Scottish people renewed 
the national covenant, and successfully resisted the attempts of 
Charles I. to impose upon them a book of canons and a liturgy,^ 
the marchioness warmly espoused the cause of the covenant. 

brims'one, a<= he did upon Sodom and Gomorrah !' " He further adds : " This nisht 
Mr. George Barclay tells me that ho discoursed Mr. Livingstone himself in Holland 
upon tMs communion, and he told him that he was such a stranger to all the minis- 
ters there, that the lady Culross was the person that put the ministers upon him, the 
minister that should have preached having fallen sick ; that it was somewhat that 
incidentally he spoke that gave occasion to the motion 311)00? The people, nnd Mr. 
Barclay repeated the words above: and Mr. Livingstone added: ' Brother, when 
you are strongly pressed to say anything you have not premeditated, do not offer to 
stop it — you know not what God has to do with it ' " — Analecta. vol. i , p 271. 

There is one point in these two accounts as to which there seems to be some dis- 
crepancy. According to Mr. Law, Messrs. Dickson and Bruce were among the 
ministers present ; and, according to Mr. Barclay. Livingstone was '' a stranger to 
all the ministers there." But Livingstone, before he was licensed to preach, knew 
at least Mr. Bruce, who, as he informs us in his Life, had been in the habit of assist- 
ing his father at Lanark at the celebration of the Lord's Supper. 

* Select Biographies printed for the Wodrow Society, vol. i., p. 348. 

t Ibid , vol. i. p. 146. 

t The book of canons received the royal sanction and became law in 1635. The 
service-book, or liturgy, was enjoined to be used by act of privy council. 20th of 
December, 1636, and the act was the following day proclaimed at the Cross of Edin- 
burgh ; hut the liturgy itself was not published till toward the end of May, 1637. 
These two books were extremely unpopular in Scotland, both because they were 
forced upon the church solely by royal authority, without the consent of the church 
herself, or without her having been even consulted, and because of the matter con- 
tained in them. The book of canons, among other things objected to, asserted the 
king's supremacy in all causes, ecclesiastical as well as civil; enjoined various un- 
warranted and superstitious rites in the observance of baptism and the Lord's Sup- 
per; proscribed sessions and presbyteries; and invested the bishops with uncontrol- 
lable power. The service-book w r as just the English liturgy with numerous altera- 
tions, by which it approached nearer the Roman missal. 



MARCHIONESS OF HAMILTON. 35 

Possessed of a strong and masculine spirit, she displayed an un- 
daunted heroism in the cause, which neither the sight of personal 
danger nor the partiality of maternal affection could subdue. 
When her son James, marquis, afterward duke of Hamilton, who 
sided with Charles I. against the covenanters, conducted an Eng- 
lish fleet to the Forth, in 1639, to overawe them, she appeared 
on horseback, with two pistols by her side, at the head of a troop 
of horse, among the intrepid thousands who lined the shores of 
Leith on that occasion, to resist his landing ; and, drawing one 
of her pistols from her saddle-bow, declared she would be the 
first to shoot him should he presume to land and attack the troops 
of the covenant.* It is said that she had even loaded her pistols 
with balls of gold ; but this rests on very doubtful authority.! It 
is certain, however, that when the marquis cast anchor in the 
Forth, near Leith, loitering for the king, whose army was march- 
ing into Scotland to his assistance, she paid him a visit on board 
his vessel. The particulars of this interview have not been re- 
corded ; but the people anticipated from it the most favorable 
results. " The son of such a mother," they said, " will do us 
no harm."| Nor did they suffer any harm. The spirited con- 
duct and intercession of his mother, it is supposed, was one cause 
which prevented the marquis's debarkation of his troops. Other 
causes, however, seem to have contributed to this. The number 
of his troops, which amounted only to about three or four thou- 
sand, was too small for the occasion. Besides, hearing that a 
part of the English army, being encountered by the Scots at 
Kelso, were defeated, with a loss of three hundred men, and put 
to flight, he was not in a disposition to engage with the cove- 
nanters, who gave such decided proofs of earnestness ; and soon 
after a pacification was concluded between them and the king, at 
the Birks of Berwick. 

Respecting this lady, we meet with no additional facts, except 
that her last will is dated the 4th of November, 1644, and that 
she died in 1647. || 

It may be added that there is a portrait of the marchioness in 
Pinkerton's " Scottish Gallery of Portraits," vol. ii. " The por- 

* Douglas's Peerage, vol. i., p. 704. 

t •' The story about the ' balls of gold,' rests on the authority of Gordon of Stra 
loch's MSS. (none of the purest, to be sure) ; but the manly heroism of the old mar' 
chioness is noticed by Spang, Hist. Motuum, p. 357." — MCrie's Sketches of Scottish 
Church History, 2d edition, p. 255. 

t Whitelock's Memorials, p. 29. Whitelock terms her " a rigid covenanter." 

|| Descriptive Catalogue of the Hamilton Papers in the Miscellany of the Maitland 
Club, vol. iv., p. 207 ; Douglas's Peerage, vol. i., p. 704. 



36 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

trait," says Pinkerton, " corresponds with the masculine charac- 
ter of the marchioness." He adds : " Johnson, the ingenious 
limner, died before he had finished the drapery of this drawing, 
which is from a painting by Jameson, at Taymouth." 



LADY BOYD. 

Lady Boyd, whose maiden name was Christian Hamilton, 
was the only child of Sir Thomas Hamilton of Priestfield, after- 
ward first earl of Haddington, by his first wife Margaret, daughter 
of James Borthwick of Newbyres. Her father, who studied law 
in France, was, on his returning to Scotland, admitted advocate, 
on the 1st of November, 1587 ; and, soon distinguishing himself 
at the bar by his talents and learning, he was, on the 2d of No- 
vember, 1592, appointed a lord of session, by the title of Lord 
Drumcairn. In February, 1596, he became king's advocate ; and 
in May, 1612, lord clerk register of Scotland. He was next 
invested with the offices of secretary of state and president of the 
court of session, which he retained till the 5th of February, 1626, 
when he was constituted keeper of the privy seal ; and on the 
27th of August, 1627, he was created earl of Haddington. He 
died on the 29th of May, 1637, in the seventy-fourth year of his 
age. By means of the lucrative offices he held, he acquired one 
of the largest fortunes of his time.* 

The subject of this notice was first married to Robert, ninth 
Lord Lindsay of Byres, who died at Bath, on 9th of July, 1616. 
To him she had a son, John, tenth Lord Lindsay of Byres, after- 
ward earl of Crawford-Lindsay; and a daughter, Helen, married 
to Sir William Scot of Ardross.f She did not long remain a 
widow, having married, for her second husband, in the year 1617, 
Robert, sixth Lord Boyd,| an excellent man, who studied at 

* Douglas's Peerage, vol. i ., pp. 678, G79. t Ibid, vol. i., pp. 386 679. 

t The marriage contract between her and that nobleman bears the date of that 
year. Chalmers' MS. Account of the Noble Families of Scotland, in advocates' 
library, volume i., p. 22. Lord Boyd was n widower, having been previously mar- 
ried tn Lady Margaret Montgomery, daughter of Robert Montsoinery of Griffeo, 
and relict of Hugh, fifth earl of Eglinton. (Douglas's Peerage, vol. ii., p. 35) The 
marriage contract between him and this lady is dated October, 1614 ; and in refer- 
ence to this marriage, writing, June 22, 1614. from London to his cousin, Robert 
Boyd of Trochrig, then on the continent, he says, " Sir George [Klphingstoun] and 
Sir Thomas have told me their commission, which is marriage with the earl of 
Kglinton his wife [widow] and has shown me many good reasons." — Wodrow'a 
life of Robert Boyd of Trochrig, printed by the Maitland Club, p. 114. 



LADY BOYD. 37 

Saumur, under his cousin, the famous Mr. Robert Boyd of Troch- 
rig, from whom he seems to have derived, in addition to secular 
learning, much religious advantage. 

Like the marchioness of Hamilton, Lady Boyd joined the 
ranks of the presbyterians who resisted the attempts of James 
VI., and Charles I., to impose prelacy upon the church of Scot- 
land. With many of the most eminent ministers of those times, 
as Mr. Robert Bruce, Mr. Robert Boyd, Mr. Robert Blair, Mr. 
Samuel Rutherford, and Mr. John Livingstone, she was on terms 
of intimate friendship ; and her many Christiau virtues procured 
her a high place in their esteem, and, indeed, in the esteem of 
all ranks and classes of her countrymen. Experiencing in her 
own heart the saving influence of Divine truth, she was desirous 
that others, in like manner, might experience its saving power ; 
and with this view she encouraged the preaching of the gospel, 
exercising a generous hospitality and liberality toward its minis- 
ters, receiving them into her house, and supplying them with 
money. In his life, written by himself, Mr. John Livingstone 
speaks of residing for some time, during the course of his minis- 
try, in the house of Kilmarnock, with " worthy Lady Boyd ;" 
and mentions her as one of four ladies of rank* of whom he got 
at several times supply of money." 

During the struggles of the presbyterians in behalf of the lib- 
erties of the church, for many years previous to the second Ref- 
ormation, it was the practice of the more zealous among them, 
both with the view of promoting their own personal piety and of 
commending to God the desolate, condition of the church, to hold 
meetings in various parts of the country, for humiliation and 
prayer, on such stated days as were agreed upon by general cor- 
respondence. And such as could not conveniently attend at the 
particular place fixed upon in the part of the country where they 
resided, not unfrequently kept the diet either at their own house 
or at the house of a friend, where a few assembled ; and in these 
cases they endeavored, if possible, to obtain the presence of a 
minister. Of these private social meetings Lady Boyd was an 
encourager ; and when it was inconvenient or impossible for her 
to be present at the appointed place of meeting in her locality, 
she spent the day in humiliation and prayer in her own house. 
A letter which she wrote to Mr. Robert Boyd of Trochrig, then 
principal of the college of Glasgow, requesting him to favor her 
with his presence at her house on one of these occasions, has 

* The other ladies were the countess of Wigton, Lady Innerteel and the countess 
of Eglinton.— Select biographies printed for the Wodrow society, vol. i., p. 148. 
4 



38 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

been preserved, and may be given as illustrating the pious spirit 
by which she was distinguished. It is without date, but from 
the subject matter, it was probably written about 1620 or 1621, 
and is as follows : — 

"Right Honorable Sir : Seeing it hath pleased God, my 
husband, — my lord is content that I bring the bairns to the land- 
wart,* I thought good to advertise you of it, that you may do me 
that great pleasure as to come and bring your wife with you, on 
Thursday, for I would fain have good company that day, since I 
have great need of help, being of myself very unable to spend 
that day as I ought. Now seeing it hath pleased God to move 
your heart to take care of my soul, and to be very comfortable 
to me, being he to whom only I have opened my secret griefs, 
and of whom I must crave counsel in those things which my 
other friends can not and shall not know. It is common to God's 
children and the wicked to be under crosses, but crosses chase 
God's children to him. that anything would chase me to God. 
But, alas ! that which chases others to God, by the strength of 
sin it holds me further from God ; for I am seeking for comfort 
in outward things, and the Lord will not let me find it there. 
When I should pray or read God's word, or hear it preached or 
read, then my mind is possessed with thoughts how to eschew 
temporal grief, or how to get temporal contentment. But, alas ! 
this doing is a building up of mountains betwixt my soul and the 
sense of God's presence, which only ministers contentment to a 
soul ; and by thus doin<r, I deserve to be plunged in infinite and 
endless grief. Now, Sir, I will not trouble you longer with this 
discourse. Hoping to see you shortly, 

" I rest your loving sister in Christ, 

" Badenheath." " Christian Hamilton.! 

These religious meetings, which contributed greatly to foster 
a spirit of opposition to the innovations then attempted to be im- 
posed upon the church of Scotland, the bishops regarded with 
great jealousy, and they endeavored, if possible, to put them down 
by forcible means. Mr. Robert Bruce having held two of them 
in his own house at Monkland, after his return to the south from 
Inverness, whither he had been banished for several years on 
account of his principles, he was delated to the king ; and though 
the meetings were private, the number present at them not ex- 

"" Land wart," ScoUice for "country." 

t Wo.Jrow'8 Life of Robert Boyd, pp. 271, 272. Wodrow Bays that " she writes 
in a very fair hand for that time." 



LADY BOYD. 39 

ceeding twenty, he was, in consequence, forced to retire from 
Monkland, and was ultimately again banished to Inverness. Mr. 
Robert Boyd, the correspondent of Lady Boyd, was also, for 
patronising such meetings, greatly harassed. After the passing 
of the Perth articles in the general assembly of 1618, Boyd, 
though opposed to these articles, had not, owing to the mildness 
and peaceableness of his disposition, interfered publicly with the 
controversies thereby occasioned ; from which the bishops con- 
cluded that, if not friendly to the innovations, he was at least 
neutral ; but his attendance at these meetings in Mr. Robert 
Bruce's house,* and at similar meetings in other places, excited 
against him the hostility of the bishops and of the king, who in- 
ferring from this his nonconforming propensities, immediately 
began to contemplate the adoption of harsh measures against 
him.f In these circumstances, Lady Boyd addressed to him an 
encouraging letter. It is well written, and bears testimony to 
the high opinion she entertained of Boyd, as a man and a Chris- 
tian minister, as well as finely illustrates the heroic spirit by 
which she was animated, and shows how well qualified she was 
to cheer up the hearts of such as were subjected to persecution 
for righteousness' sake. It is dated December 17, but the year 
is omitted. Its contents, however, indicate that it was written 
in the year 1621 ; and it is as follows : — 

" Right Honorable Sir : I hear there is some appearance 
of your trouble, by reason the king's majesty is displeased with 
you for your being with Mr. Robert Bruce. Since I heard of 
these unpleasant news, I have had a great desire to see you, for 
whatsoever is a grief to you is also grievous to me, for, since it 
pleased God to bring me to acquaintance with you, your good 
advice and pious instructions have ofttimes refreshed my very 
soul ; and now, if I be separated from you, so as not to have oc- 
casion to pour out my griefs unto you, and receive counsel and 
comfort from you, truly I wot not what to do. And as I regret 
my own particular loss, much more may I regret the great loss 
our kirk sustains, and is threatened with. But as for you, if the 
Lord should honor you, and set you to suffer for his name, I trust 
in his mercy he shall strengthen you and make his power perfect 
in your weakness. The apostles rejoiced that they were counted 
worthy to suffer for the name of Christ, and the apostle says, 

*Boyd regarded Bruce with peculiar respect and veneration. Speaking of him, 
be says, " whom one may call justly the Basile or Bernard of our age." — Wodrow's 
Life of Boyd, p. 10. t Ibid , p. 151. 



40 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

' Unto you it is given, in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe 
on him, but also to suffer for his sake.' Now if ye be called to 
this honor, I pray God give you his grace, that ye may account 
it your honor, for if ye suffer with Christ, you shall also reign 
with him. I trust in the mercy of God that all things shall work 
together for the best to you. If it might please our God, who is 
merciful, to continue you in your ministry, I humbly crave it ; 
but if he will glorify himself in your suffering, his good will be 
done. Ye Avill lose nothing here, and what ye lose it will be 
recompensed a hundred-fold. The loss will be ours, who are 
left as sheep without a shepherd, ready to wander and be devour- 
ed by wolves. Now if I have a wandering soul, the Lord in 
mercy pity me ! for I am afraid of making defection, if the bread 
of life be not continued with me. In sincerity, it will not be 
philosophy nor eloquence will draw me from the broad way of 
perdition, unless a voice be lifted up like a trumpet to tell mo 
my sin. The Lord give us the spirit of wisdom, even that wis- 
dom that will prove wise in the end, when the wise men of this 
world will be calling upon the hills and the mountains ! O Lord, 
give us grace to provide our oil here, that we may enter in with 
the bridegroom, and be made partakers of his riches and joy, 
when they that have embraced the world and denied Christ shall 
have their portion with the devil ! Sir, I will not trouble you 
further at this time. If you have leisure I would be glad to see 
you, or at any other time, and to hear from you. So, remember- 
ing my duty to your wife, and commending you and her and the 
children to God, 

" I rest your most affectionate sister at power, 
" Badenheath, Dec. 17." "Christian Hamilton.* 

From this letter it appears that Lady Boyd sat under the min- 
istry of Mr. Boyd,f which she greatly valued, as she had good 
reason to do, if we may judge of his pastoral instructions from 
the specimens of his theological writings which have been pub- 
lished ; and Boyd, having become obnoxious to the bishops and 
the king, she was apprehensive of being deprived of his public 
ministrations, as well as of his society in private, by his being 
removed from his charge, and perhaps obliged to leave the coun- 
try. The result was, that demitting his situation as principal of 
the college of Glasgow, he retired to his estate of Trochrig, and 
afterward, to the day of his death, suffered, in various ways, on 

* Wodrow's Life of Robert Boyd, pp 272, 273. 

t At the time this letter was written, Boyd, besides being principal of the college 
of Glasgow, was minister of Govan. 



LADY BOYD. 41 

account of his nonconformity. " It is not easy," says Wodrow, 
" upon such a subject not to mix a little gill with my ink ; but I 
shall only say, it's a remaining stain, and must be, in the eyes 
of all that fear God, and know what prayer is, upon the bishops 
of this period, and the government who were brought, by their 
importunity, to persecute such eminent persons as Mr. Bruce 
and Mr. Boyd, for joining in such meetings for prayer, in such 
a time as this. Mr. Bruce was confined ; Mr. Boyd was informed 
against to the king ; and this, as the writer of his life notices, 
was one main spring of the violent opposition made against him. 
Such procedure, no doubt, is a reproach upon a protestant, yea, 
upon a country that bears the name of Christian."* 

As another specimen of the pious spirit which breathed in 
Lady Boyd's epistolary correspondence, we may quote another 
of her letters to Mr. Boyd, which is without date, but which 
Wodrow supposes was written about harvest 1622. She thus 
writes : — 

" My husband has written for me to come to your feast, but in 
truth it were better for me to be called to a fast. I trowf the 
Lord of hosts is calling to weeping, and fasting, and sackcloth. 
I pray you, sir, remember me in your prayers to God, that he 
may supply to me the want of your counsels and comforts, and 
all other wants to me ; and that at this time, and at all other times, 
he would give me grace to set his majesty before me, that I may 
Avalk as in his sight, and study to approve myself to him. Now 
sir, I entreat you when you have leisure write to me, and adver- 
tise me how ye and yours are, and likewise stir me up to seek 
the Lord. SIioav me how I shall direct to 3^ou, for I must crave 
leave to trouble you at some times. Now I pray God to recom- 
pense ten thousand fold your kindness to me, with the daily 
increase of all saving grace here, and endless glory hereafter. 
Remember me to Mr. Zachary ; desire him to come, and bear 
my lord company awhile after ye are settled. I entreat, when 
you come back again to Glasgow, that you may come here, for 
I think I have not taken my leave of you yet. Till then and ever, 
" I rest your loving sister in Christ to my power, 

" Christian Hamilton."! 

In 1628 Lady Boyd was left a widow a second time, Lord 
Boyd having died in August that year, at the early age of thirty- 
three. To this nobleman she had a son, Robert seventh Lord 

* Wodrow's Life of Robert Boyd, p. 151. t " Trow," Scottice for " believe." 

J Ibid. pp. 273, 274. 

4* 



42 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

Boyd, and six daughters : 1, Helen, who died unmarried ; 2, Ag- 
nes, married to Sir George Morison of Dairsie, in Fife ; 3, Jean, 
married to Sir Alexander Morison of Prestongrange, in the coun- 
ty of Haddington ; 4, Marion, married to Sir James Dundas of 
Arnistoun ; 5, Isabel, married first to John Sinclair of Stevenston, 
secondly to John Grierson of Lagg ; and 6, Christian, married to 
Sir William Scot of Harden.* 

At the period of the attempted imposition of the book of canons 
and the service-book or liturgy upon the Scottish church, by royal 
authority, many, both ministers and laity, were subjected to per- 
secution for resisting these invasions on the liberties of the 
church ; and to such persons, as might be anticipated from the 
benevolence of her character and her ecclesiastical principles, 
Lady Boyd Avas at all times heartily disposed to extend her en- 
couragement and aid by letter, word, or deed. When Rutherford 
was confined to Aberdeen, she maintained epistolary intercourse 
with him ; and that worthy minister repeatedly expresses how 
much his soul was refreshed by her letters, as well as gratefully 
acknowledges that she " ministered to him in his bonds. "t She 
also took a friendly interest in his brother, Mr. George, who was 
a teacher in Kirkcudbright, but who, for nonconformity, had been 
summoned in November, 1636, before the high commission, and 
condemned to resign his charge and to remove from Kirkcud- 
bright before the ensuing term of Whitsunday.^ Rutherford 
frequently expresses his gratitude to her for her kindness to his 
brother, who, after his ejection, had taken refuge in Ayrshire. 
He thus writes to her from Aberdeen, on the 7th of March, 1637 : 
" I think myself many ways obliged to your ladyship for your 
love to my afflicted brother, now embarked with me in that same 
cause. His Lord hath been pleased to put him on truth's side. I 
hope that your ladyship will befriend him with your counsel and 
countenance in that country where he is a stranger ; and your 
ladyship needeth not fear but your kindness to his own will be 
put up into Christ's accounts. "|| In another letter to her from 
the same place, in September, that year, he says, " All that your 
ladyship can expect for your good will to me and my brother (a 
wronged servant for Christ) is the prayers of a prisoner of Jesus, 
to whom I recommend your ladyship, and your house, and chil- 
dren. "§ And in a communication to her from St. Andrews, in 
1640, a considerable time after he had returned from his confine- 

* Dousks's Peerage of Scotland, vol. ii., p 35. 

t Rutherford's Letters, pp. 205, 617, Whyte and Kennedy's edition, 1848. 

} Murray's Life of Rutherford, pp. 49, 93. 

|| Rutherford's Letters, p. 205. § Ibid, p. 494. 



LADY BOYD. 43 

merit in Aberdeen, he thus expresses himself: "I put all the 
favors which you have bestowed on my brother, upon Christ's 
score, in whose books are many such counts, and who will re- 
quite them."* 

Meanwhile she was not neglectful of the cultivation of personal 
piety. As she advanced in life she continued with increasing 
ardor to practise the Christian duties, to cultivate holiness of char- 
acter, to confide in the Savior, and to make sure of eternal life. 
That such were her Christian aspirations, endeavors, and attain- 
ments, is evident from her correspondence with the same excel- 
lent man ; from which we learn, that as the Father of lights had 
opened her eyes to discover that whoever would be a Christian 
in deed and in truth must exercise self-denial, she was resolved 
to practise that duty, — to pluck out the right eye, and to cut off 
the right hand, and keep fast hold of the Son of God ; that she 
had not changed in the thoughts she had entertained of Christ ; 
and that her purpose still was by all means to take the kingdom 
of heaven by violence.! It was indeed her personal piety which 
excited and enlivened her zeal in the public cause of God ; and 
her valued correspondent, satisfied that the more she improved 
in the former, she would be the more distinguished for the latter, 
expresses his desire in a letter to her, in 1640, that she might 
be builded more and more upon the stone laid in Zion, and then 
she would be the more fit to have a hand in rebuilding our Lord's 
fallen tabernacle in this land, " in which," he adds, " ye shall 
find great peace when ye come to grip with death, the king of 
terrors. "J As a means of promoting her spiritual improvement 
she was in the practice of keeping a diary, in which she recorded 
her religious exercises and experiences, her defects and attain- 
ments, her sins and mercies ; an expedient which Christians 
have sometimes found to be of great utility in promoting their 
vigilance, humility, gratitude, and dependence upon God. " She 
used every night," says Mr. Livingstone, " to write what had been 
the state of her soul all the day, and what she had observed of 
the Lord's dealing."|| Such memorandums she, however, appears 
to have intended solely for her own eye ; and no remains of them 
have been transmitted to posterity. 

In the autumn of the year 1640, Lady Boyd met with a pain- 
ful trial in the death of three of her brothers, and others of her 
relatives, in very distressing circumstances. Thomas, second 
earl of Haddington, and Robert Hamilton of West Binning, in 

* Rutherford's Letters p. 606. t Ibid, pp. 205, 492. t Ibid, p. 606 

|| Livingstone's Memorable Characteristics. 



44 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

the county of Linlithgow, her brothers by her father's second 
wife,* Patrick Hamilton, her natural brother, Sir John Hamilton 
of Redhouse, her cousin-german, and Sir Alexander Erskine, 
fourth son of the seventh earl of Mar, brother-in-law to her broth- 
er Thomas, all perished at Dunglass castle (in the county of Had- 
dington) when it was blown up on the 30th of August that year. 
They had attached themselves to the covenanters ; and when 
General Leslie inarched into England that same year against 
Charles I., they were left behind by the Scottish parliament, in 
order to resist the English incursions : and Thomas, second earl 
of Haddington, who had the command of the party thus left, fixed 
his quarters at Dunglass castle. While his lordship, about mid- 
day, on the 30th of August, was standing in a court of the castle, 
surrounded by his friends now named, and several other gentle- 
men, to whom he was reading a letter he had just received from 
General Leslie, a magazine of gunpowder contained in a vault in 
the castle blew up ; and one of the side walls instantly over- 
whelmed him and all his companions, with the exception of four, 
Avho were thrown by the force of the explosion to a considerable 
distance. The earl's body was found among the rubbish, and 
buried at Tyninghame. Besides this nobleman, three or four 
score of gentlemen lost their lives. It was reported that the 
magazine was designedly blown up by the earl's page, Edward 
Paris, an English boy, who was so enraged, on account of his 
master having jestingly told him that his countrymen were a pack 
of cowards, to suffer themselves to be beaten and to run away at 
Newburn, that he took a red-hot iron and thrust it into one of the 
powder-barrels, perishing himself with the rest.f One of the 
most beautiful of Rutherford's letters was addressed to Lady Boyd 
on this melancholy occasion. " I wish," says he, "that I could 
speak or write what might do good to your ladyship, especially 
now when I think we can not but have deep thoughts of the 
deep and bottomless ways of our Lord, in taking away with a 
sudden and wonderful stroke your brothers and friends. You may 
know that all who die for sin, die not in sin ; and that ' none can 
teach the Almighty knowledge.' He answereth none of our 
courts, and no man can say, ' What doest thou V It is true that 
your brothers saw not many summers, but adore and fear the 
sovereignty of the great Potter who maketh and marreth his clay- 

* Her father's s<x?ond wife was Margaret, daughter of James Foulis, of Colinton, 
in the county of Edinburgh, 
t Douglass Peerage of Scotland, vol. i., p. 680; Scot's Staggering State of Scots 

Sta'efiinen. 



LADY BOYD. 45 

vessels when and how it pleaseth him Oh what wisdom is 

it to believe, and not to dispute ; to subject the thoughts to his 
court, and not to repine at any act of his justice ! He hath done 
it : all flesh be silent ! It is impossible to be submissive and re- 
ligiously patient, if you stay your thoughts down among the con- 
fused rollings and wheels of second causes ; as, ' Oh, the place !' 
— « Oh, the time !' — ' Oh, if this had been, this had not followed !' 
— '■' Oh, the linking of this accident with this time and place !' 
Look up to the master motion and the first wheel. ... I believe, 
Christian lady, your faith leaveth that much charily to our Lord's 
judgments as to believe, howbeit you be in blood sib to that cross, 
that yet you are exempted and freed from the gall and wrath that 
is in it. I dare not deny but ' the King of Terrors dwelleth in 
the wicked man's tabernacle : brimstone shall be scattered on 
his habitation' (Job xviii. 15) ; yet, madam, it is safe for you to 
live upon the faith of his love, whose arms are over-watered and 
pointed with love and mercy to his own, and who knoweth how 
to take you and yours out of the roll and book of the dead."* 

In less than three months after this visitation, Lady Boyd lost 
her son Lord Boyd, who died of a fever on the 17th of Novem- 
ber, 1640, at the early age of twenty-four. f But her sorrow un- 
der this bereavement was alleviated from the hope which, on 
good grounds, she was enabled to entertain that her son, who was 
deservedly dear to her, had exchanged the present for a better 
world. Trained up in the fear of God, he gave pleasing indica- 
tions of early piety, and, embracing the sentiments of the cove- 
nanters, entered with all the interest and ardor of youthful zeal 
into their contendings against the encroachments of the court on 
the rights of the church. To this, ample testimony is borne in 
Rutherford's letters. Writing to him from Aberdeen, in 1637, 
Rutherford, hearing of his zeal for the " borne-down and oppressed 
gospel," affectionately stimulates him to continued exertion in the 
same cause ; and in a subsequent letter to him he says : " I am 
glad to hear that you, in the morning of your short day, mind 
Christ, and that you love the honor of his crown and kingdom. 
.... Ye are one of Zion's born sons ; your honorable and Chris- 
tian parents would venture you upon Christ's errands.";); Addres- 
sing Lady Boyd from Aberdeen, May 1, 1637, Rutherford thus 
writes : " I have reasoned with your son, at large ; I rejoice to 
see him set his face in the right airth, now when the nobles love 
the sunny side of the gospel best, and are afraid that Christ wants 

* Rutherford's Letters, pp. 617, 618. t Douglas's Peerage, vol. ii., pp. 635, 636. 
X Rutherford's Letters, pp. 139, 469. 



46 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

soldiers, and shall not be able to do for himself."* And in an- 
other letter to her he expresses his gratitude to this generous and 
benevolent youth, " who," says he, " was kind to me in my bonds, 
and was not ashamed to own me."f Lord Boyd was one of those 
noblemen who, on. the 22d of February, 1638, ascended the cross 
of Edinburgh, to protest against the proclamation which was that 
day made, containing his majesty's approbation of the service- 
book, granting a dispensation to the noblemen and gentlemen who 
opposed it for their past meetings, and discharging all their meet- 
ings for the future under pain of treason.^ He subscribed the 
national covenant when renewed On the 1st of March that year, 
in the Greyfriars' church ; and zealously co-operated with the 
covenanters in their proceedings in opposition to the measures 
of the court. 

In her other son, John, tenth Lord Lindsay, afterward earl of 
Crawford-Lindsay, Lady Boyd had also much comfort. His reli- 
gious sentiments coincided with her own, and his active zeal in 
defending the liberties of the church, was associated with sincere 
piety and a high character for moral worth, which he maintained 
unimpaired to the close of a long life. In a letter to him from 
Aberdeen, in September, 1637, Rutherford writes: "Your noble 
ancestors have been enrolled among the worthies of this nation 
as the sure friends of the Bridegroom, and valiant for Christ : I 
hope that you will follow on to come to the streets for the same 
Lord. "|| Nor was the hope thus expressed disappointed. He 
was also one of the noblemen who, on the 22d of February, 1637, 
appeared at the cross of Edinburgh, to protest against his majes- 
ty's proclamation already referred to. He likewise subscribed 
the national covenant when renewed at Edinburgh a few days 
after, and cordially supported the covenanters, attending their 
meetings, and giving them the benefit of his counsel and aid.fy 
He thus secured a high place in the confidence of his party. 
"Writing of this nobleman, and of Lord Boyd, to their mother, 
Rutherford says : " Your ladyship is blessed with children who 
are honored to build up Christ's waste places. I believe that 
your ladyship will think them well bestowed in that work, and 
that Zion's beauty is your joy."*I[ 

Some of Lady Boyd's daughters were also distinguished for 
personal piety, and for a resolute adherence to duty in the face 

* Rutherford's Letters, p. 308. t Ibid, p. 548. t Rothes's Relation, 4c, p 67. 
II Rutherford's Letters, p. 466. § Rothes's Relation, &<\, pastim. 

IT Rutherford's Letters, p 605. The letter is dated St. Andrews, 1640. For a 
further account of Lord Lindsay, see Notice of Duchess of Rothes. 



LADY BOYD. 47 

of persecution. The sufferings endured by her daughter Chris- 
tian, the wife of Sir William Scot, of Harden, in the reign of 
Charles II., for attending conventicles, have been already briefly 
stated in the introduction. We also know that another of her 
daughters, Helen, wife of Sir William Scot, of Ardross, was an 
excellent woman. 

Rutherford when in London, in 1640 and in 1644, corresponded 
with Lady Boyd, giving her accounts of the state of religious par- 
ties there, and informing her of the proceedings of the Westmin- 
ster assembly, of whitsh he was a member.* 

During the latter part of the year 1644, when the marquis of 
Montrose came into Scotland, and during the greater part of the 
following year, our country suffered much from that ruthless ren- 
egade, who, with an army composed of Highlanders and Irish 
papists, perpetrated the most atrocious deeds of cruelty, lust, and 
rapine. But in September, 1645, he was completely defeated at 
Philiphaugh by Lieutenant-General David Leslie, who had come 
home with some regiments from England, where the regular 
troops of Scotland had been engaged. The joy which this vic- 
tory diffused among our countrymen was great. As an evidence 
of this, we may mention the following incident, which took place 
on a sabbath-day at the parish church of Elie, where Lady Boyd 
was present hearing sermon. About the close of the afternoon's 
discourse by Mr. Robert Traill, the minister of the parish, David 
Lindsay, brother to Lord Balcarres, came into the church with a 
letter to her from her son, earl of Crawford-Lindsay, containing 
the tidings of Montrose's defeat. Public Avorship being concluded, 
he delivered it to her in the church, and the people all staying to 
hear the news, the letter was read. On hearing its contents, 
they were so overjoyed, that they all returned into the church 
and solemnly gave thanks to God for the deliverance vouchsafed 
to the country by this signal victory gained over an enemy whose 
successes had made him formidable, and his barbarities very gen- 
erally detested.f 

Lady Boyd died in the house of her daughter Lady Ardross, in 
the parish of Elie, about the beginning of the year 1646. On 
her death-bed she was frequently visited by Mr. Robert Traill, 
minister of that parish, who informs us in his diary that she died 
very comfortably. J Her funeral took place on the 6th of Febru- 
ary, and was attended by a large concourse of people of all ranks. 

* Rutherford's Letters, pp. 625, 632. 

t Extracts from Mr. Robert TraiU'a Diary, in MS. Letters to Wodrow, vol. xix« 
No. 68, in Advocates' Library. J Ibid 



48 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

All the members of parliament, which had been sitting in St. An- 
drews, were invited to it ; and though the parliament closed on 
the 4th of that month, all its members stayed in town, partly be- 
cause the next dav was appointed to be kept as a day of solemn 
humiliation through the whole kingdom, and partly to testify their 
respect for this lady, by following her mortal remains to their 
last resting-place. Mr. Robert Blair, then minister of St. An- 
drews, who was well acquainted with her, and who highly appre- 
ciated the excellence of her Christian character, also paid to her 
this last tribute of friendship, and wrote two epitaphs in honor of 
her memory, the one in Latin and the other in English ;* neither 
of which, however, we have seen. Rutherford, who Avas at that 
time in London, attending the Westminster assembly, on hearing 
of the death of a friend and correspondent he so highly esteemed, 
addressed to her daughter, Lady Ardross, a consolatory letter: 
" It hath seemed good, as I hear," says he, " to Him that hath 
appointed the bounds for the number of our months, to gather in 
a sheaf of ripe corn, in the death of your Christian mother, into 
his garner. It is the more evident that winter is near, when 
apples, without the violence of wind, fall of their own accord off 
the tree. She is now above the winter, with a little change of 
place, not of a Savior ; only she enjoyeth him now without mes- 
sages, and in his own immediate presence, from whom she heard 
by letters and messengers before." He further says : " Ye may 
easily judge, madam, what a large recompense is made to all her 
service, her walking with God, and her sorrows, with the first 
cast of ihe soul's eye upon the shining and admirably beautiful 
face of the Lamb that is in the midst of that fair and white army 
which is there, and with the first draught and taste of the fount- 
ain of life, fresh and new at the well-head ; to say nothing of the 
enjoying of that face, without date, far more than this term of life 
which we now enjoy. And it cost her no more to go thither than 
to suffer death to do her this piece of service ; for by Him who 
was dead and is alive, she was delivered from the second death. 
What, then, is the first death to the second? Not a scratch of 
the skin of a finger to the endless second death. And now she 
sitteth for eternity mail-free, in a very considerable land, which 
hath more than four summers in the year. Oh, what spring-time 
is there ! Even the smelling of the odors of that great and eter- 
nally-blooming Rose of Sharon for ever and ever ! What a sing- 
ing life is there ! There is not a dumb bird in all that large field ; 
but all sing and breathe out heaven, joy, glory, dominion, to the 
• Row's Life of Robert Blair, p. 180. 



LADY CULROSS. 49 

High Prince of that new-found land. And verily, the land is the 
sweeter, that Jesus Christ paid so dear a rent for it, and he is 
the glory of the land : all which," he adds, for Lady Ardross, as 
has been said before, was a woman of like spirit with her mother, 
" I hope, doth not so much mitigate and allay your grief for her 
part (though truly this should seem sufficient), as the unerring 
expectation of the dawning of that day upon yourself, and the 
hope you have of the fruition of that same king and kingdom to 
your own soul."* 



ELIZABETH MELVILL. 

LADY CULROSS. 

Elizabeth Melvill, a contemporary of the two ladies previ- 
ously noticed, Avas the daughter of Sir James Melvill of Halhill 
in Fife. Her father, who was one of the most accomplished 
statesmen and courtiers of his age, was embassador from Queen 
Mary to Queen Elizabeth, and a privy counsellor to King James 
VI. He was also a man of sincere piety, and as Mr. John Liv- 
ingstone informs us, " professed he had got assurance from the 
Lord that himself, wife, and all his children should meet in heav- 
en."! After a long and active life he died on the 13h of Novem- 
ber, 1617. Her mother was Christian, seventh daughter of 
David Boswell of Balmuto.;}; Her husband, James Colvill, was 
the eldest son of Alexander Colvill, commendator of Culross. 
On the death of James, second Lord Colvill of Culross, in 1640, 
he became of right third Lord Colvill, but did not assume that 
title. 

At what period the subject of this notice experienced the re- 
newing grace of the Holy Spirit we are ignorant, but few women 
of her day became more eminent for exemplary piety and reli- 
gious intelligence, or more extensively known, and more highly 
esteemed among the ministers and professors of the church of 
Scotland. Taking her place among those who resisted the at- 
tempts made to wrest from the church her own free and inde- 
pendent jurisdiction, and to bring her in her worship and whole 

* Rutherford's Letters, p. 655. See a letter of Mr. Robert M' Ward's to Lady 
Ardross, in Appendix No. 1. 

t Livingstone's Memorable Characteristics in Select Biographies, printed 'for the 

Wodrow Society, vol. i., p. 346. t Douglas's Peerage, vol., ii. pp. 113, 310. 

5 



50 , THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

administration under the entire control of the crown, she interested 
herself greatly in their contendings. The fortitude displayed 
by the defenders of truth and freedom commanded her admiration : 
their sufferings excited her sympathy. To these sentiments 
and feelings she gave expression in the following sonnet of her 
own composition, which she sent to Mr. John Welsh, when, for 
holding a general assembly at Aberdeen in July, 1605, he was 
imprisoned in the castle of Blackness, and so closely confined 
as to be secluded from all intercourse with his friends : — 

"My dear brother, with courage hear the cross, 
Joy shall be joiner) with all ihy sorrow here, 
High is thv hope, disdain this earthly dross, 
Once shall you see the wished day appear. 
" Now it is dark, the sky can not be clear, 
After the clouds it shall be calm anon ; 
Wait on his will whose blood ha'h brought thee dear — 
Extol his name, tb/ ugh outward joys be gone. 
" Look to the Lord, thou art m t left alone, 

Since he is thine, what pi as u re canst thou take ? 
He is at hand, and hears thv every gro:.n: 
End out thy fight, and suffer for his sake. 
"A sight most bright thy son) shall shortly see, 

When store of gloir* thy rich reward shall be."t 

The pious and generous feeling breathed in these lines could 
not fail to gratify and encourage this great and good man under 
his sufferings. In a similar strain she wrote to Mr. William 
Rigg of Athernie, bailie of Edinburgh, who was imprisoned in 
Blackness castle,^ in 1624, for refusing to communicate kneeling, 
after that practice had been introduced into the churches of the 
city, reminding him, among other things, by a pleasing and in- 
genious antithetic play upon the name and gloom of his prison, 
that " the darkness of Blackness was not the blackness of dark- 
ness. "|| 

How much her heart went along with the contendings of the 
presbyterians against the attempts of James VI., to establish prel- 
acy and its ceremonies, as well as how highly she was respected, 
is also evident from the following incidental allusion to her in 
Kirkton's History. After stating that King James in his old age 
undertook a journey to Scotland, to establish the English core- 
monies, the historian goes on to say : " So in a corrupt assembly 

"* " Gloir," Scnttice for " glory." 

t Wodrow MSS., Advocates' library, vol. xxix., 4to, No. 4. 
tFor some account of this castle, see Life of Lady Caldwell. 
|| Livingstone's Characteristics in Select Biographies, printed for the Wodrow 
Society, vol. i., p. 342. 



LADY CULROSS. 51 

at Perth, he first got his five articles concluded, and thereafter 
enacted in parliament at Edinburgh, in the year 1621. This 
parliament was always by common consent called ' The Black 
Parliament,' not only because of the grievous acts made therein, 
but also because of a number of dismal ominous prodigies which 
attended it, the vote itself which accomplished the design of the 
meeting being accompanied with a horrible darkness, thunder- 
claps, (ire, an unheard-of tempest, to the astonishment of both 
parliament and city, as was observed by all. The bishops had 
procured all the dissatisfied ministers to be discharged the town, 
so divers of them, upon the last day of the parliament, went out 
to Sheens, near Edinburgh, where in a friend's house they spent 
the day in fasting and prayer, expecting the event, of which they 
were as then uncertain. After the aged ministers had prayed in 
the morning with great straitening, at length a messenger from 
the city, with many tears, assured them all was concluded con- 
trary to their request. This brought them all into a fit of heavi- 
ness, till a godly lady there present, desired Mr. David Dickson, 
being at that time present, might be employed to pray, and though 
he was at that time but a young man, and not very considerable 
for his character, yet was he so wonderfully assisted, and enlarged 
for the space of two hours, that he made bold to prophesy, that 
from that discouraging day and forward, the work of the gospel 
should both prosper and flourish in Scotland, notwithstanding all 
the laws made to the prejudice of it."* Kirkton has not recorded 
the name of the lady who suggested that Dickson should be,, em- 
ployed in prayer ; but Livingstone, who narrates the same inci- 
dent in his Memorable Characteristics, informs us that Lady Cul- 
ross told him she was the person by whom the suggestion was 
made.f 

On the preaching of the gospel, Lady Culross attended with 
exemplary regularity. She was also much in the practice of 
frequenting sacramental solemnities. In those days the dispen-' 
sation of the Lord's supper in the parishes of ministers famed 
for preaching the gospel, was flocked to by vast multitudes from 
the surrounding districts, so that often many thousands were as- 
sembled together to partake of, or to witness, this feast of love. 
These were interesting occasions. They generally took place 
in the summer season ; and the sermons were preached in the 
open air. The solemnity of the public services powerfully en- 
gaged the attention as well as affected the heart ; and in the fer- 

* Kirkron's History, pp. 16, 17, 18. 

t Select Biographies, printed for the Wodrow Society, vol. i , p. 317. 



52 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

vent love which pervaded the private Christian fellowship of the 
people with one another, there was exhibited a spectacle on 
which angels might have looked with delight. The families of 
the parish, on whom their minister was careful to enforce the 
duty of entertaining strangers, from the consideration that " there- 
by some have entertained angels unawares," exemplified an open- 
hearted and openhanded hospitality. Many of them accommoda- 
te! so great a number that their domestic circle had the appear- 
ance of a small congregation, and it seemed as if the primitive 
days of Christianity had returned, when the disciples had all 
things in common. Thus Christians from different parts of the 
country became acquainted with one another, fraternal love was 
cultivated, and by their religious conversation and devotional ex- 
ercises, they strengthened the ardor of their mutual piety. It is 
no wonder that such seasons were looked forward to with eager 
expectation, and that they left behind them a refreshing and an 
ever-cherished remembrance. Few were more in the habit of 
waiting upon these observances than Lady Culross ; and when 
circumstances prevented her from being present, she frequently 
secured the services of a friend to take notes of the sermons for 
her use. She indeed appears not to have been without fears of 
exceeding in her attendance on sacraments the bounds of duty, 
and of thereby neglecting the concerns of her family at home. 
At one time meeting with Euphan M'Cullen, a poor but pious wo- 
man in the parish ol'Kilconquhar, who was well known among the 
deveut of her day, and who is said to have seldom prayed with- 
out getting a positive answer, Lady Culross requested her to pray 
for her in regard to the outward condition of her family. On 
being inquired at what answer she had got, the good old woman 
replied that the answer was, " He that provideth not for his own 
house, hath denied the faith." At which Lady Culross said, 
" Now you have killed me ; for I go to preachings and commu- 
nions here and there, neglecting the care of my own family." 
Euphan replies, " Mistress, if you be guilty in that respect, you 
have reason to be humbled for it ; but. it was not said in that 
sense to me ; but the Lord said, ' I that have said, he that provi- 
deth not for his own is worse than an infidel, will not I provide 
for her and her house, seeing she is mine V "* 

One of the principal places which Lady Culross frequented 
for enjoying the sacrament of the Lord's supper, was Lanark, 
the minister of which parish, at that time, was Mr. William Liv- 
ingstone, the father of the celebrated Mr. John Livingstone, min- 
* Livingstone's Characteristics in Select Biographies, vol. i., p. 339. 



LADY CULROSS. 53 

ister of Ancrum. Residing in the family of the minister of the 
parish on these solemnities, and also occasionally at other times, 
she Avas struck with the promising piety, the love of learning, 
and the suavity of manners, which characterized young Living- 
stone, and seems to have early anticipated his future eminence 
as a minister of the gospel, as she did that, of Mr. David Dick- 
son, when an obscure young man ; for among other gifts which 
distinguished her, she was an acute judge of both character and 
talents. Livingstone, on the other hand, formed a high estimate 
of her Christian excellence, as well as of her intellectual endow- 
ments ; and he records in his life the benefit he derived from her 
religious conversation and demeanor, during those occasions on 
which she was a guest in his father's house.* An intimate 
Christian friendship thus came to be formed between her and 
Livingstone, which lasted till her death ; and an epistolary in- 
tercourse was maintained between them. After the grave had 
closed over her, Livingstone continued to retain a lively and 
grateful recollection of her talents and piety. In his Memorable 
Characteristics he has given her a place among the " professors 
of the church of Scotland, of his acquaintance, who were emi- 
nent for grace and gifts ;" and he thus describes her : " Of all 
that ever I saw, she was most unwearied in religious exercises ; 
and the more she attained access to God therein, she hungered 
the more. At the communion in Shotts, in June, 1630, the. night 
after the sabbath was spent in prayer by a great many Christians 
in a large room, where her bed was ; and in the morning all go- 
ing apart for their private devotion, she went into the bed, and 
drew the curtains, that she might set herself to prayer. William 
Rigg, of Athernie, coming into the room, and hearing her have 
great motion upon her, although she spoke not out, he desired her 
to speak out, saying that there was none in the room but him and 
her woman, as at that time there was no other. She did so, and 
the door being opened, the room filled full. She continued in 
prayer, with wonderful assistance for large three hours' time."f 

The account here given of Lady Culross's ardent devotional 
feeling, as it appeared at the communion in Shotts, will perhaps 
excite the ridicule of some, who may be disposed to regard her 
as actuated more by ostentation and enthusiasm, than by modest, 
sincere, and enlightened piety. But a slight attention to the sim- 
plicity of the times in which she lived, will show how little 
ground there is for pronouncing so harsh a censure. More prim- 

* Life of Mr. Jolm Livingstone in Select Biographies, vol. i., p. 130. 
t Livingstone's Memorable Characteristics in Select Biographies, vol. i., p. 346. 
5* 



54 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

itive in their manners and habits than in the present day, the peo- 
ple of those times are not to be judged of by modern customs, 
nor condemned for that which, though unfit for imitation in the 
altered state of society, conveyed to their minds nothing incon- 
sistent with true delicacy. And before we censure her unusual 
earnestness in prayer, and the uncommon length of time during 
which the exercise was continued, let us remember that in that 
age the influences of the Holy Spirit were poured out upon the 
good in no ordinary measure, imparting to them a high degree 
of spiritual vitality, and giving a peculiar depth and fervor to their 
piety. 

This consideration alone, not to mention other considera- 
tions, will serve to explain why public prayers and sermons, as 
well as social prayer, protracted to an extent to which the patience 
of few hearers would now be equal, so far from fatiguing, seemed 
only to refresh and invigorate our hardier and more devout an- 
cestors. Nor is it to be forgotten, should we feel a tendency to 
find fault with these simple annals of primitive piety, that on the 
very day on which this lady was engaged in the manner de- 
scribed, there took place such a remarkable outpouring of the 
Spirit at the kirk of Shotts, as has hardly been equalled since the 
days of the apostles ; and who can tell how far this was vouch- 
safed in answer to the prayers of this devout woman — as well as 
in answer to the prayers of those who passed the night between 
the sabbath and Monday morning in this exercise — poured forth 
with great earnestness and importunity to Him, who has prom- 
ised the effusion of the Spirit upon the church as the fruit of be- 
lieving prayer ? It is also worthy of notice, that, as has been 
previously stated, it was at her suggestion that the ministers as- 
sisting in the celebration of the Lord's supper, on that occasion, 
laid the work of addressing the people on the Monday, upon Mr. 
John Livingstone, whose discourse was the instrument, in the 
hand of the Spirit, of turning so many from darkness to light, 
and from the power of Satan unto God. 

These fruits of Mr. Livingstone's ministry served to increase 
the high estimation in which Lady Culross held him, as an em- 
bassador of Christ ; and upon the death of Mr. Robert Colvill, 
minister of Culross, in 1630,* she was very desirous of having 
him settled minister of that parish. This appears from a letter 
she wrote to him, dated 25th March, 1631. "I confess," says 

* On December 5, 1640 [ 1630 ?], this minister's son, Mr. Robert Colvill. in Cul- 
ross, was restored heir to his father in the lands of Nether Kynnedder, in the regal- 
ity of Dunfermline. Inquis. Retor. Abbrev. Fife, No. 001. 



LADY CULROSS. 55 

she, " it is no time for me to quarrel* now, when God is quarrel- 
ling with us, and has taken away our dear pastor, who has 
preached the word of God among us almost forty years, plainly 
and powerfully : a sore stroke to this congregation, and chiefly 
to me, to whom he was not only a pastor and a brother, but, under 
God, a husband and a father to my children. Next his own fam- 
ily I have the greatest loss. Your sudden voyage has troubled 
me more since than ever, and many of this congregation, who 
would have preferred you to others, and would have used all 
means possible if you had been in this land ; but now I fear the 
charm is spilt : yet you can not go out of my mind, nor out of 
the mind of some others, who wish you here with our hearts to 
supply that place, and pray for it, if it be the Lord's will, though 
by appearance there is no possibility of it, for I think they have 
agreed with another ; yet if God have a work, he can bring it 
about, and work contrary to all means, for there is nothing too 
hard for him."f The wish expressed in this letter was not how- 
ever gratified. The parish of Culross was supplied with another 
minister, Mr. John Duncan,^ and Livingstone remained in Ire- 
land, but was soon after, in consequence of his nonconformity, 
first suspended from the exercise of his ministry, then deposed, 
and next excommunicated by the bishop of Down, and ultimately 
forced to leave the country. 

It has been formerly said that Lady Culross and Livingstone 
maintained an epistolary correspondence. A number of her let- 
ters to him have been lately printed. Written in a homely and 
quaint phraseology peculiar to that age, they yet contain nothing 
at variance with genuine good taste or sobriety of feeling. Char- 
acterized throughout by the familiar, they occasionally indulge 
in the facetious, and their prevailing spirit is that of fervent piety, 
and an ardent attachment to the public cause, for which presby- 
terians were then contending, combined with a solid and enlight- 
ened judgment. As a specimen of her skill and ability in 
encouraging the ministers of the gospel under their sufferings 
for the sake of Christ, a part of her letter to Livingstone on the 
occasion of his being suspended from the ministry, dated " Hal- 
hill, 10th December, 1631," may be quoted. It is headed with 
the following text of Scripture, " Surely the rage of man shall 
turn to thy praise ; the remnant of their rage wilt thou restrain ;" 

* In tlie preceding part of the letter she had been blaming Livingstone, who had 
gone to Ireland in the autumn of the year 1630, for his haste in leaving Scotland. 

t Letters from Lady Culross to Mr. John Livingstone, in Select Biographies, 
printed for the Wodrow Society, vol. i., p. 358. 

$ Records of the Synod of Fife, p. 236. 



56 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

and it begins as follows : " My very worthy and dear brother, I 
received your letter, and have no time to answer you as I would. 
I thank the Lord who upholds you in all your trials and tempta- 
tions. It is good for you to be holden in exercise, otherwise I 
would suspect that all were not well with you. God is faithful, 
as you find by experience, and will not try you above your 
strength. Courage, dear brother, all is in love, all works together 
for the best. You must be hewn and hammered down, and 
dressed and prepared before you be a living stone fit for his build- 
ing. And if he be minded to make you meet to help to repair 
the ruins of his house, you must look for other manner of strokes 
than you have yet felt. You must feel your own weakness that 
you may be humbled and cast down before him, that so you may 
pity poor weak ones that are borne down with infirmities. And 
when you are laid low and vile in your own eyes, then will he 
raise you up, and refresh you with some blinks of his favorable 
countenance, that you may be able to comfort others with those 
consolations wherewith you have been comforted by him. This 
you know by some experience, blessed be God ! And as strength 
and grace increase, look for stronger trials, fightings without, 
and fears within, the devil and his instruments against you, and 
your Lord hiding his face. [You are] deeply, almost over- 
whelmed with troubles and terrors ; and yet out of all this misery, 
he is working some gracious work of mercy for the glory of his 
great name, the salvation and sanctification of your own soul, 
and for the comfort of his distressed children there or here, or 
both, as pleases him. Up your heart then, and prepare for the 
battle ! Put on the whole armor of God ; though you be weak, 
you have a strong Captain, whose power is made perfect in 
weakness, and whose grace is sufficient for you. What you 
want in yourself you have in him, who is given to you of God to 
be your wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption, 
your treasure and treasurer, who keeps all in store. . . . Since 
he has put his work in your weak hands, look not for long ease 
here ; you must feel the weight of that worthy calling, and be 
holden under with the sense of your own weakness, that he may 
kythe*his strength in due time; — a weak man and a strong 
God, who will not fail nor forsake you, but will furnish strength 
and gifts, and grace, according to that employment that he puts 
in your hands. The pain is but for a moment, the pleasure ever- 
lasting. The battle is but short, your Captain fights for you, 
therefore the victory is certain, and the reward glorious. A 

* " K) the," Scollicc for " sbow." 



LADY CULROSS. 57 

crown and a kingdom are worth fighting for. Blessed be his 
name who fights all our battles, and works all our works for us! 
Since all is in Christ, and he our:-;, what would we have more 
but thankful hearts, and grace to honor him in life and death, 
who is our advantage in life and death, who guides with his 
counsel, and will bring us to his glory. To him be all honor, 
power, and praise, now and for ever. Amen.''* 

Lady Culross was also the friend and correspondent of Mr. 
Samuel Rutherford, some of whose letters to her in 163G and 
1G37 are preserved in the published collection of his letters. She 
was then considerably advanced in years, but had seen no reason 
for changing the sentiments on ecclesiastical questions which 
she had embraced in early life ; nor had her zeal in adhering to 
them abated. When Rutherford was summoned to appear he- 
fore the court of high commission at Edinburgh in 163G, more 
than thirty years had passed over her head since she addressed 
Mr. Jehu Welsh in the prison of Blackness ; but the suH'crings 
of good men in the cause of religious freedom still made her 
heart swell with emotions of sympathy ; and hearing of the un- 
just proceedings instituted against the minister of Anwoth, she 
addressed to him a letter giving expression to her sentiments 
and feelings. Rutherford lost no time in replying, and his an- 
swer is written with all the confidence of Christian friendship.! 

The best of God's people have sometimes been unequally 
yoked, and their children, instead of proving a comfort to them, 
have been the source of their most poignant grief. In these re- 
spects Lady Culross was severely tried. Writing to Livingstone 
from Halhill, 10th of December, 1631, she says : " Guiltiness in 

me and mine is my greatest cross My great temptation 

now is, that I fear my prayers are turned into sin. I find and 
see the clean contrary in me and mine, at least some of them .J 
Samuel is going to the college in St. Andrews to a worthy mas- 
ter there, but I fear him deadly. I depend not on creatures. 
Pray earnestly for a blessing. He whom you know is like to 
overturn all, and has broken all bands — Lord, pity him ! There 
was some beginning of order, but all is wrong again, for the death 
of his brother makes him take liberty, so I have a double loss."i| 

* Select Biographies, vol i , pp. 361, 362. t Rutherford's Letters, pp. 108, 1 09. 

t She had a daughter to whom this complaint did not apply. In a letter to her 

from Aberdeen, in 1637, Butherfnrd writes: "Your son-in-law, W G , is 

now truly honored for his Lord and Master's cause ... He is strong in the Lord, 
as he hath written to me, and his wife is his encourager, which should make you 
rejoice." — Rutherford's Letters, p. 437. 

|| Select Biographic'?, vol. i , pp. 362. 363, 



58 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

It has been said that she " here most probably refers to her son 
James, whose conduct often occasioned great anxiety to his moth- 
er."* We are rather inclined to think that the reference is to 
her husband. f Five or six years after this, she complains, in a 
letter to Rutherford, of the heavy trial she met with from the 
misconduct of one of her sons, who, so far from proving " a 
restorer of her life and a nourisher of her old age," was to her a 
source of the bitterest sorrow. Rutherford, writing from Aber- 
deen in 1637, says in reply : " As for your son who is your grief, 
your Lord waited on you and me till we were ripe, and brought 
us in. It is your part to pray, and wait upon him. "When he is 
ripe, he will be spoken for. Who can command our Lord's wind 
to blow 1 1 know that it shall be your good in the latter end. 
That is one of your waters to Heaven ye could not go about : 
there are fewer behind. I remember you and him, and yours as 
I am able. "J 

Whether this letter refers to her third son Samuel, or to an- 
other of her sons, we are unable to determine. It is, however, 
certain that Samuel was far from embracing the principles or 
following the example of his mother. He was the author of the 
piece of Scottish " Hudibras" entitled " Mock Poem, or Whigs' 
Supplication, in two parts," printed at London in 1681 ; a pro- 
duction Avhich could not have been written by a man of strong 
sympathies. Its evident object is to provoke the mirth of the 
reader, by setting forth, in a ludicrous light, the sufferings en- 
dured by the presbyterians under Charles II., and their endeav- 
ors to obtain the redress of their grievances. This betrays both 
bad taste and want of feeling. If for men to make themselves 
merry, in any case, over scenes of oppression and wretchedness, 
is inconsistent with generous and humane feeling, it is evident 
that to make the barbarities exercised toward our presbyterian 
ancestors the means of ministering to our gayety, abstracting alto- 
gether from the consideration of their principles, can on no ground 
be vindicated. It is, in fact, nothing better than would be the 
spectacle of a man, who, while looking on a fellow-creature un- 
der the rack, amused himself by mimicking or by describing, in 
ludicrous phrase, the writhings and convulsions of the sufferer. 
Samuel Colvill was also the author of a work entitled " The 
Grand Impostor discovered : or, an Historical Dispute of the Pa- 
pacy and Popish Religion; 1. Demonstrating the newness of 
both; 2. By what Artifices they are maintained; 3. The Con- 

* Select Biographies, vol.. i , pp. 362. 363. t See p. 55. 

X Rutherford's Letters, p. 437. 



LADY CULROSS. 59 

tradictions of the Roman Doctors in defending them." It was 
printed at Edinburgh in 1673, and is dedicated to the duke of 
Lauderdale. In the dedication the author states that he had the 
honor to be the duke's con-disciple, adding, " at which time it 
did not obscurely appear what your grace would prove afterward. 
Also having presented several trifles to your grace, at your two 
times being in Scotland, you seemed to accept of them with a 
favorable countenance, which encouraged me to trouble your grace 
afresh." 

As we have already seen, Lady Culross cultivated a taste for 
poetry. One of her poetical effusions, in particular, attracted the 
admiration of her friends, and was published at their request so 
early as 1603. It is a thin quarto, consisting of sixteen pages, 
and is printed in black letters, with the following title : " Ane 
Godlie Dreame, compylit in Scottish Meter, be M. M. Gentle- 
woman in Culros, at the Requeist of her Freindes. Introite per 
angustam portam, nam lata est via qua; ducit ad interitum.* Ed- 
inburgh: Printed be Robert Charteris, 1603." In this poem, as 
in Bunyan's immortal work, "The Pilgrim's Progress," the prog- 
ress and conclusion of the Christian's life is described under the 
similitude of a journey. Written with much liveliness of fancy 
and description, and with a fluency of versification superior to 
most of the poetical compositions of that age, it gained her at the 
time considerable reputation ; and, in the opinion of competent 
judges, it establishes her claims to poetical powers of no mean 
order. As it is now rarely to be met with, a brief view of its 
subject-matter may be given, and a few passages may be quoted 
as a specimen of the poetry of that period. It is introduced with 
a description of the heaviness of heart which the writer felt, from 
her solitary musings on the depraved state of the world in her 
day, which she calls " this false and iron age," and on the bias 
of her own heart to sin. Troubled with a train of reflections on 
these and similar topics, she endeavored to pray ; but utterance 
failed her, and she could only sigh, until relieved by the effusion 
of tears, when she poured forth her lamentations. Thus tran- 
quillized, she retired to bed, and falling asleep, dreamed that her 
grief and lamentation were renewed, and that with tears she be- 
sought God for succor : — 

"Lord Jesus come (said I) and end my grief, 

My sp'rit is vexed, the captive would be free; 
All vice abounds, oh send us some relief! 
I loathe to live, I wish dissolved to be." 

* That is, " Enter ye in at the strait gate, for broad is the way that leadeth to de- 
struction." 



60 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

While with sighs and sobs she was pouring forth her com- 
plaint, she thought there appeared to her an angel of a shining 
countenance and loving looks, who entreated her to tell him the 
cause of her grief. Her reply is couched in these lines : — 

" I sighed again, and said : ' Alas for me ! 

My priet is great, I can it not declare: 
Into this earth I wander to and fro, 

A pilgrim poor, consumed with sighing sair. 
My sin, alas ! increases mair and mair — 

I loathe my life, I irk to wander here : 
I long for heaven, my heritage is there ; 

I long to live with my Redeemer here.' " 

The angel, pleased with this account of her grief, bade her rise 
up immediately and follow him, promising to be her guide, and 
commanding her to refrain from her tears, and to trust in his 
word and strength. By his endearing accents, and at the sight 
of his fair countenance, her weary spirit revived, and she hum- 
bly desired him to tell her his name. To which he answered 
(for he was no other person than the Angel of the covenant, the 
Lord Jesus Christ) that he was her God, adding, in amplification 
of the gracious relation in which he stood to her, that he was 
" the way, the truth, and life," her " spouse," her "joy, rest, and 
peace ;" and then exhorting her thus : — 

•' ' Rise up anon, and follow after me : 

I shall lead thee into thy dwelling-place — 
The land of rest thou long'st so acre to see ; 
1 am thy Lord, that soon shall end thy race.' " 

Thanking him for his encouraging words, she declared her 
readiness to follow him, and expressed an earnest desire speed- 
ily to see " the land of rest" which he promised her. He an- 
swered that the way to it was strait, that she had yet far to go, 
and that before reaching it she behooved to pass through great 
and numerous dangers, which would try her " feeble flesh." She 
admitted that her flesh was weak, but hoped that her spirit was 
-willing, and besought him to be her guide; in which case she 
would not be discouraged. She next gives the history of her 
journey under his conduct : — 

" Then up I rose and made no more delay — 

My feeble arm about his arm I cast: 
He went before and still guide the way; 

Though I was weak, my sp'rit did follow fast — 
Through moss and mires, through ditches deep we passed, 

Through pricking thorns, through water, and through fire : 
Through dreadful dens, which made my heart aghast, 

He bore mc up when I began to tire." 



LADY CULROSS. 01 

After further describing herself and her guide as climbing high 
mountains, passing through vast deserts, wading through great 
waters, and wending their way through wild woods, in which, 
through the obstruction of briers, it would have been impossible 
for her, without his assistance, to have proceeded, she says : — 

" Forward we passed on narrow brigs of tree, 

O'er waters great that hideously did roar; 
There lay below that fearful was to sec — 

Most Ugly beasts that gaped to devour! 
My head grew li^ht and troubled wondrous sore; 

My heart did fear, my feet began to slide; 
But when I cried, he heard me ever more, 

And held me up — O blessed be my guide !" 

Escaping these dangers, and exhausted through fatigue, she at 
length thought of sitting down to rest ; but he told her that she 
must proceed on her journey ; and accordingly, though weak, she 
rose up at his command. For her encouragement, he pointed to 
that delightful place after which she aspired, apparently at hand ; 
and looking up, she beheld the celestial mansion, glistening like 
burnished gold and the brightest silver, with its stately towers 
rising full in her view. As she gazed, the splendor of the sight 
dazzled her eyes ; and in an ecstasy of joy she besought her guide 
to conduct her there at once, and by a direct course. But he 
told her that, though it was at no great distance, yet the way to 
it Avas extremely difficult, and, encouraging her not to faint, bade 
her cleave fast to him. Having described the difficulties and 
dangers she subsequently met with in the course of her journey, 
she concludes the poem with an explanation of the spiritual mean- 
ing of the dream. The following is one of the concluding stan- 
zas : — 

'•' Rejoice in God, let not your courage fail, 

Ye chosen saints that are afflicted here : 
Though Satan rage, he never shall prevail — 

Fight to the end and stoutly persevere. 
Your God is true, your blood is to him d^ar, 

Fear not the way since Christ is your convoy : 
When clouds are past, the weather will grow clear; 

Ye sow in tears, but ye shall reap in joy." 

To the " Godly Dream" there is added a short poem, entitled 
" A Comfortable" Song, to the Tune of ' Shall I let her go V " 
which we here subjoin : — 

"Away, vain world, bewitcher of my heart ! 
My sorrow shows my sins make me to smart : 
Yet will I not despair, but to my God repair — 
He has mercy aye, therefore will I pray ; 
He has mercy aye, and loves me, 
Though by his troubling hand he nroves me. 
6 



62 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

" Away ! away ! too long thou hast me snared : 
I will not tytie more lime ; I am prepared 
Thy subth- slight to flee ; thou haet deceived me: 

Though they sweetly smile, smoothly they beguile: 
Thoagh tliey sweeily smile, suspect'them— 
The simple sort they syle,* reject them. 

" Once more, away ! shows loath tlie world to leave- 
Bids oft away with her that holds me slave: 
Loath I am to forego that sweet, alluring foe. 

Since thy ways are vain, shall I them retain ? 
Since thy ways are vain, I quit thee— 
Thy pleasure shall no more delight me. 

" A thousand times away ! Ah ! stay no more ; 
Sweet Christ, me save", lest subtle sin devour': 
Without thy helping hand, I have no strength to stand. 
Lest I turn aside, let ihy grace me guide : 
Lest 1 turn aside, draw near me: 
And when I caU for help, Lord ! hear me. 

" What shall I do ? are all my pleasures past 1 
Shall worldly lusts now take their leave at last' 
Yea, Christ these earthly toys shall turn in heavenly jovs ■ 
Let the world be gone, I will love Christ alone, ' 
Let the world be gone, I care not: 
Christ is my love alone, I fear not." 



LADY JANE CAMPBELL, 

VISCOUNTESS OF KENMURE. 

Lady Jane Campbell, Viscountess of Kenmure, was one 
of the most eminent of the religious ladies who lived durino- the 
seventeenth century and her name is well known to the religious 
people of Scotland. No female name of that period has indeed been 
more familiar to them than hers for nearly two centuries Nor 
is this owing to her having left behind her any autobiography or 
diary containing a record of the Christian graces which adorned 
her character, or of the remarkable events of the times in which 

It is the letters of the celebrated Mr. Samuel Rutherford— whose 
wonderful effusions of sanctified genius-which have immor- 
talized her memory and made her name familiar to the pious 
peasantry of our land Who is there that has read the beautiful 
letters addressed to her by that eminent man, who has not felt 
the attractions of her character? although it is only indirectly 
* " To sile" or "syle," Scot, for " to cover" or " to blindfold." 



LADY KENMURE. 63 

that we can deduce from them the elements which rendered it so 
attractive.* 

Lady Jane Campbell was the third daughter of Archibald, sev- 
enth earl of Argyll, by his first wife, Anne, fifth daughter of Wil- 
liam, sixth earl of Morton, of the house of Lochlevin.f The 
precise date of her birth is uncertain, but her parents were mar- 
ried before October, 1594. Descended on both the father's and 
the mother's side from ancient and noble families of great dis- 
tinction, she was particularly honored in her paternal ancestors, 
who were renowned for the zeal with which they maintained the 
cause of the Reformation. Her great grandfather, Archibald, 
fourth earl of Argyll, who in extreme old age espoused, among 
the first of his rank, protestant principles, was one of the lords 
of the congregation who subscribed the " Band," dated Edinburgh, 
December 3, 1557, the first covenant or engagement of the Scot- 
tish reformers for their mutual defence ;| and on his death-bed, || 
he left it as his dying charge to his son Archibald, Lord Lorn, 
afterward fifth earl of Argyll, " that he should study to set for- 
ward the public and true preaching of the Evangell of Jesus 
Christ, and to suppress all superstition and idolatry to the utter- 
most of his power. "§ This son who was the granduncle of the 
subject of this notice, had previously embraced the Reformation 
cause, which he promoted with all the ardor of youthful zeal, and 
he too was one of the lords of the congregation who subscribed 
the famous " Band," to which allusion has just now been made. 
Of her mother little is known. To her, Sir William Alexander, 
afterward earl of Stirling, inscribed his Aurora, in 1604, and he 
gallantly says of his amatory fancies, that " as they were the fruit 
of beauty, so shall they be sacrificed as oblations to beauty." It 
may also be stated that Park, in his edition of Walpole's Royal 
and Noble Authors, has a portrait of her mother, taken from a 
painting in the collection of Lady Mary Coke.^f Of this parent 
she had the misfortune to be deprived in her tender years. Her 
father married for his second wife, on the 30th of November, 
1610, in the parish church of St. Botolph, Bishopsgate, London, 
Anne, daughter of Sir William Cornwallis of Brome, ancestor 

* Rutherford was singularly free from the vice of flattery ; and this greatly en- 
hances the value of the illustrations of character which may be derived from his let- 
ters. " I had rather commend grace than gracious persons," says he, to Lady Ken- 
mure, in his Dedication of his " Trial and Triumph of Faith"' to her; and on this 
principle he proceeded in writing his letters. 

t Douglas's Peerage, vol. i , p. 94. In vol. ii., p. 274, her mother is called Agnes. 

t Knox's History of the Reformation in Scotland, Wodrow Society edition, vol. 
i., pp. 273, 274. || He died toward the close of the year 1558. 

§ Knox's History, &c, vol. i., p. 290. HVol. v., p. 64. 



64 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

of Marquis Corawallis, by Lucy, daughter of John (Xevill), Lord 
Latimer. About eight years after this marriage, he went, to Spain, 
and having entered into the service of Philip III., distinguished 
himself in the wars of that monarch against the states of Hol- 
land. Through the influence of his second wife, who was a pa- 
pist, he embraced the popish religion, although he had, for the 
best part of his life, been a warm and zealous protestant. He 
returned to England in 1638, and died at London the same year, 
aged about sixty-two.* 

In her early years, Lady Jane was of a delicate constitution, 
and she suffered much from bodily affliction. It was no doubt 
hard to human nature to languish at a period of life when she 
might naturally have looked for health and enjoyment ; but as we 
may gather from Mr. Samuel Rutherford's, and Mr. Robert 
M'Ward's letters to her, this became, by the Divine blessing, the 
means of impressing upon her youthful mind a deep sense of the 
importance of religion, and of bringing her to the saving knowl- 
edge of Christ. Rutherford writing to her says : " I am glad that 
ye have been acquainted from your youth with the wrestlh) 
Ood." — "I think it great mercy that your Lord from your yotrth 
hath been hedging in your outstraving affections, that tin y 
not go a-whoring from himself." — " I knew and saw him (Christ) 
with you in the furnace of affliction ; for there he wooed you to 
himself and chose you to be his."f And M'Ward in a letter to 
her, says : " He made you bear the yoke in your youth, and was 
it not in the wilderness that he first allured you and spoke to 
your heart ? and when come to greater age ye wanted not your 
domestic fires and house furnace.''^: In youth, too, she imbibed 
that strong attachment to presbyterian principles, Avhich distin- 
guished her during the whole of her future life. 

This lady was first married to Sir John Gordon of Locbinvar, 
afterward viscount of Kenmure. The exact date of this 
we have not ascertained ; but we find her mentioned as his wife 
early in 1626. Mr. John Livingstone, who had visited Galloway 
in the beginning of the summer of that year upon the invitation 
of Sir John Gordon, informs us in his life, that during the short 
period of his sojourn in that district, he " got acquaintance with 
Lord Kenmure and his religious lady."j| Sir John was a man 

* Douglas's Peerasre, vol. i., p. 94 : and vol. ii , p , '274. Playfair's British Fam- 
ily Antiquities, vol. iii., pp. 127. 247. 

t Letters of Mr. Samuel Rutherford, Whyte and Kennedy's edition, Edinburgh, 
1848, pp. 8. 45, 58. 

J Wodrow MS3. vol. lviii., folio, No. 53. 

lect Bio'.Tnphieo, printed for the Wodrcw Society, vol. i., p. 133. Doughs is 



LADY KENMURE. G5 

of accomplishment and piety, and, like Ins lady, a warm friend 
to the presbyterian interest. As Rosco, the place of his resi- 
dence, was situated in the parish of Anwoth, he made no small 
exertions, and ultimately with success, to effeel the disjunction 
of that parish from two other parishes* with which it was united, 
and to get it erected into a separate parish, having a minister e: - 
clusively to itself. He had first an eye to Mr. John Livingstone 
as its minister, whom with that view, as we have seen, he invi- 
ted to Galloway, but who, before the difficulties in the way of its 
erection into a separate parish were overcome, accepted a call 
from Torphichen. He, however, succeeded in obtaining for An- 
woth, Mr. Samuel Rutherford ; nor was his zeal limited to his 
endeavors to obtain an efficient gospel-minister to his own parish, 
the extension of the same blessing through the length and breadth 
of the land being an object in which he felt the deepest interest.! 
Lady Gordon and her husband were thus placed under the min- 
istry of Mr. Samuel Rutherford. This they accounted a high 
privilege, and they were in no small degree instrumental, both by 
the example of a Christian deportment, and by the influence of a 
high station, in promoting the interests of true religion among 
their fellow-parishioner:;. 

From the beginning, Lady Gordon formed a very high opinion 
of Rutherford's talents and piety ; and, as the course of his min- 
istry advanced, she appreciated in an increasing degree his pas- 
toral diligence and faithfulness. Rutherford, on the other hand, 
highly esteemed her for the amiableness of her disposition, the 
humility of her demeanor, and the sanctity of her deportment, as 
well as for her enlightened and warm attachment to the presbv- 
terian cause. An intimate Christian friendship was thus soon 
formed between them ; and they maintained frequent epistolary 
intercourse on religious subjects till the death of Rutherford, the 
last of whose letters to her, dated July 24, 1660, scarcely eight 
months before his own death, was written on hearing that her broth- 
er, the marquis of Argyll, was imprisoned by Charles II., in the 
Tower of London. Many of his letters to her have been printed, 
and are well known. All of tjiem evidently indicate his conviction 
that he was writing to one whose attainments in religion Avere 
of no ordinary kind, as well as the deep interest which he took 
in her spiritual welfare and comfort ; and they abound in grate- 
ful acknowledgments of the numerous tokens of kindness and 

therefore mistaken in saying in his Peerage, (vol. ii , p. 27), that their marriage took 
place in 1628. 

* These were Kirkdale and Kirkmabrpck. t Rutherford's Letters, p. 7. 

6* 



66 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

generosity which he had received at her hands. None of her 
letters to him have been preserved ; but, from the allusions to 
them in his letters, we gather that they were characterized by a 
strain of sincere and humble piety, by the confidence of genuine 
friendship, the warmth of Christian sympathy, and a spirit of ac- 
tive benevolence. She complained that, notwithstanding all the 
methods adopted by her Savior to teach her, she was yet an ill 
scholar, lamented her deficiencies in the practice of holiness, and 
expressed her fears that she had little grace, but encouraged her- 
self from the consideration that God's compassions failed not, 
although her service to him miscarried.* In all her difficulties, 
doubts, and trials, she applied to him for advice and comfort, in 
the happy art of communicating which he was equalled by few. 
And such was the confidence she reposed in his piety, wisdom, 
and prudence, that she could communicate the state of her mind to 
him with more freedom than to almost any other individual with 
whom she was acquainted. Of all his friends, none took a deeper 
interest in his welfare than she took. Tender in her feelings, she 
warmly sympathized with him under his domestic afflictions, un- 
der the loss of his children and his wife.f Her influence she 
was ever ready to exert in his behalf when he was subjected to 
public suffering in the cause of truth ; and instances are not want- 
ing of persons in high places befriending him from a knowledge 
of the Christian intimacy which subsisted between him and this 
excellent lady. When he was summoned to appear before the 
court of high commission in 1630, Mr. Alexander Colville, one 
of the judges, " for respect to your ladyship," says Rutherford to 
her, " was my great friend, and wrote a most kind letter to me. 
I entreat your ladyship to thank Mr. Alexander Colville with two 
lines of a letter ."| When he was before the same court in 1636, 
" the Lord," says he, writing to Marion M'Naught, " has brought 
me a friend from the highlands of Argyll, my lord of LornJ who 
has done as much as was within the compass of his power ;"§ an 
act of generosity which he doubtless owed to his friendship with 
Lady Gordon ; for he was " a poor unknown stranger to his lord- 
ship. "1 And when her influence was insufficient to shield him 
from persecution, he could calculate upon being a sharer in her 
sympathies and prayers, as his numerous letters to her from Aber- 
deen, when confined a prisoner there by the high commission- 
court, fully testify. Writing to her from his place of confinement, 

* Rutherford's Loiters, pp. 123, 183, 200, 203-205. t lb , pp. 57, 65, 67. J lb., p. 21. 
|| Brother to Lady Kenmure, and afterward the marquis of Argyll, who suffered 
iu LCiOl. § Rutherford's Letters, p. 105. U Ibid., p. 107. 



LADY KENMURE. G7 

June 17, 1637, he says, " I am somewhat encouraged in that your 
ladyship is not dry and cold to Christ's prisoner, as some arc."* 
And in a letter to Lady Culross, from the same place and in the 
same year, he thus writes : " I know also that ye are kind to my 
worthy Lady Kenmure, a woman beloved of the Lord, who hath 
been very mindful of my bonds. The Lord give her and her 
child to find mercy in the day of Christ. "f 

Lady Gordon, who had suffered much from ill health in the 
previous part of her life, was, in July, 1628, visited with sick- 
ness. Under this affliction, Rutherford reminded her that He 
who " knew the frame and constitution of her nature, and what 
was most healthful for her soul, held every cup of affliction to 
her head with his own gracious hand ;" and that her " tender- 
hearted Savior, who knew the strength of her stomach, would 
not mix that cup with one dram weight of poison. '"J: About the 
close of the same year, or the beginning of the year 1 629, she 
was bereaved of an infant daughter. On this occasion Ruther- 
ford visited her, to administer Christian comfort, and afterward 
kindly addressed to her a consolatory letter. Among other 
things, he suggested to her these considerations, so finely ex- 
pressed, and so well fitted to sustain the afflicted spirit of a mother 
under such a trial : " Ye have lost a child ; nay, she is not lost 
to you who is found to Christ ; she is not sent away, but only 
sent before, like unto a star, which, going out of our sight, doth 
not die and evanish, but shineth in another hemisphere. Ye see 
her not, yet she doth shine in another country. If her glass was 
but a short hour, what she wanteth of time, that she hath gotten 
of eternity ; and ye have to rejoice that ye have now some plen- 
ishing up in heaven. Show yourself a Christian by suffering 
without murmuring. In patience possess your soul."|| 

In the autumn of the year 1629, she and her husband removed 
from Rosco to London, where they intended to reside for some 
time.§ The design of Sir John in going to London probably was 
to prosecute his views of worldly honor and ambition. By right 
of his mother, who was Lady Isabel Ruthven, daughter of Wil- 
liam, first earl of Gowrie, he expected that the honors of the 

* Rutherford's Letters, p. 409. t Ibid , p 438. J Ibid., p 5. || Ibid., pp 8-10. 

§ Murray, in his ,; Memoirs of Lord Kenmure," prefixed to an edition of his " Last 
mid Heavenly Speeches," says that they removed to Edinburgh, but this must be a 
mistake; fir Rutherford, bidding Lady Gordon farewell on that occasion, says that 
hi 1 "had small assurai «•>' ever to see her face agaiu till the last general assembly, 
where the whole church universal shall meet" — language which be would not prob- 
ably have used had she only removed to Edinburgh ; and he farther says: "Ye are 
going to a country where the Sun of Righteousness in the gospel shineth not so 
clearly as in this kingdom." — Rutherford's Letters, p. 10. 



G8 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

house of Gowrie, attainted for high-treason in 1600, would be 
revived in his person. With the view of making this acquisi- 
tion, he is said to have sold the lands of Stitchill,* the ancient 
inheritance of the family, and to have given to the duke of Buck- 
ingham, the evening before his assassination by Felton, the pur- 
chase price, in a purse of gold, as a bribe to him to support his 
claims, f 

Lady Gordon's change of residence, brought about by these 
circumstances, in less than two years after Rutherford's induc- 
tion, was no small loss both to him and to his people ; and he 
lamented her departure as one of the heaviest trials he had met 
with since the Lord had called him to the ministry ; " but," says 
he, " I perceive God will have us to be deprived of whatsoever 
we idolize, that he may have his own room. "J 

During her absence, she and Rutherford maintained a regular 
epistolary correspondence. He assured her how exceedingly he 
longed to hear of her spiritual welfare, and that it was his con- 
stant prayer at the throne of grace, that while " deprived," as she 
then was, " of the comfort of a lively ministry," God might be to 
her as a little sanctuary ; and that as she " advanced in years and 
stealed forward insensibly toward eternity, her faith might grow 
and ripen for the Lord's harvest."! In her communications to 
him, she complained of bodily infirmity and weakness ; but Ruth- 
erford reminds her that " it is better to be sick, providing Christ 
come to the bedside and draw by (aside) the curtains, and say, 
' Courage, I am thy salvation,' than to enjoy health, being lusty 
and strong, and never to be visited of God."§ He also regrets 
her absence, for the sake of the interests of religion in her native 
country. "We would think it a blessing," says he, "to our 
kirk, to see you here."^[ She and her husband appear to have 
remained in England till about the close of the year 1631, when 
they returned to Scotland, and settled at Kenmure castle, a place 
about twenty miles distant from Anwoth, and which has ever 
since been the residence of the family.** During her stay in 
England, notwithstanding reports to the contrary, she "had not 
changed upon nor wearied of her sweet master Christ and his 
service ;" and Rutherford still " expected that whatever she could 
do by word or deed for the Lord's friendless Zion, she would 
do it."tf 

* He was served heir to his father 20th of March, 1C29, his father having died in 
November, 1628. — Douglas's Peerage, vol. ii., p '-'7. t Ibid. 

t Rutherford's Letters, p. 11. |! Ibid., pp. 17, 20. 37. <i Ibid., pp. IP, 20. 

% Ibid . p. 17. ** Ibid,, pp. 39, 40. it Ibid., p. 44. 



LADY KENMUKB. 69 

Early in the year 1633, she was bereaved of another daughter, 
who died in infancy, as we learn from a letter written to her by 
Rutherford on the 1st of April that year. "I have heard also, 
madam, that your child is removed; hut to have or want is be t 
as He pleaseth. Whether she he with you or in God's keeping, 
think it all one ; nay, think it the better of the two by far that 
she is with him."* 

By letters-patent, dated 8th of May, 1633, her husband was 
created viscount of Kenmure and lord of Lochinvar, the title 
descending to his heirs male whatever bearing the name and 
arms of Gordon ; and she was with him in Edinburgh when he 
attended King Charles I. at the parliament in June that year; 
but after staying only a few days, they returned home to their 
country-seat, the castle of Kenmure. The reason of their early 
departure was this : In that parliament Charles intended to pass 
two acts — the one, ratifying the acts of Perth assembly and other 
acts made for settling and advancing the estate of bishops ; and 
the other, asserting the king's prerogative to impose the surplice 
and other popish apparel upon ministers.! For neither of these 
acts could Lord Kenmure, according to his convictions of duly, 
give his vote ; but instead of attending the parliament, and hon- 
estly opposing the passing of these acts, as others nobly did, at 
a juncture when the safety of the presbyterian cause demanded 
the most decided and energetic measures on the part of its friends, 
he pusillanimously deserted the parliament, under pretence of 
indisposition, for fear of incurring the displeasure of his prince, 
who had already elevated him to the peerage, and from whom he 
expected additional honors ; a dereliction of duty for which at 
the time, as he afterward declared, he felt " fearful wrestlings of 
conscience," and which caused him the most bitter remorse in 
his dying moments. 

When in Edinburgh, Lady Kenmure had an opportunity of 
witnessing the imposing splendor and gayety of a court ; but 
scenes which have so often dazzled and intoxicated others, only 
served the more deeply to impress upon her mind, what she had 
long before learned by the teaching of the Spirit of God, the 
empty and evanescent nature of all the- glitter and pageantry of 
the world. " I bless the Lord Jesus Christ," says Rutherford to 
her on her return, " who hath brought you home again to your 
country from that place where ye have seen with your eyes, that 
which our Lord's truth taught you before, to wit, that worldly 

* Rutherford's Letters, p. 56. 

t Scot's Apologetical Narration, p. 340 ; Rutherford's Letters, p. 490. 



70 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

glory is nothing but a vapor, a shadow, the foam of the water 
or something less and lighter, even nothing; and that our Lord 
hath not without cause said in his word, ' The countenance or 
iashion of this world passeth away.'"* 

Worldly honor and splendor had', however, more attractions for 
her husband. So great an influence had they of late acquired 
over his mind, that though there is every reason to believe he 
was a converted man, yet he had fallen into a state of compara- 
tive indifference both as to personal religion and the public inter- 
ests of the church. Rutherford, it would seem, perceived this 
and with his characteristic fidelity urges it upon Lady Kenmure' 
as a part of the truth of her profession, to drop words in the 
ears of her noble husband continually of eternity, judgment, death 
hell, heaven, the honorable profession, the sins of his father's 
house. « I know," says he, " he looketh homeward and loveth 
he truth but I pity him with my soul, because of his many temp- 
tations, t V\ ith this counsel, from her eminently religious char- 
acter, we need not doubt that she would comply 

In the spring of 1634, she lost another daughter, who had be- 
come dangerously ill toward the close of the preceding year and 

Innl W A S S/ b B ° U i a } 7*\ 0ld4 Writin « t0 Marion ^'Naught, 
April 25 1634, Rutherford says : « Know that I have been vis- 
iting Lady Kenmure. Her child is with the Lord; I entreat 
you visit her, and desire the goodwife of Barcapple to visit her 
and Knockbreck,|| if you see him in the town. My lord her 
husband is absent, and I think she will be heavy " And in a 
consolatory letter addressed to herself on that occasion he thus 
writes : "I believe faith will teach you to kiss a striking Lord 
and so acknowledge the sovereignty of God in the death of a 
child to be above the power of us mortal men, who may pluck 
up a flower in the bud, and not be blamed for it. If our dear 
l.ord pluck up one of his roses, and pull down sour and green 
Iruit before harvest, who can challenge him ?"& 

In the autumn of 1634, she met with a still more severe trial 
in the death of Lord Kenmure. His lordship left Kenmure cas- 
tle for Edinburgh in the month of August that year, probablv on 
business connected with the earldom of Gorwie, to which he'was 
so desirous of being elevated. But it was the ordination of Prov- 
idence that his hopes of this preferment should never be realized. 
Alter staying some days in Edinburgh, he came home toward 
the end of August under much indisposition. It turned out to 

• Rutherford's Letters p. 76. t Ibid n =;q f iu - n c ~ 

II Robert Gordou of K^ckbreck. § Rather^ Letters^ 65^ *' ^ 



LADY KENMURE. 71 

be a fever, of which, after enduring much suffering, he died on 
the 12th of September, at the early age of thirty-five. Having, 
as we have just now said, been for some time past less careful 
in cultivating personal piety, and less zealous in promoting the 
public interests of the church than in former days, he was pain- 
fully conscious of his want of preparation for death ; and at first 
the most poignant remorse took possession of his conscience, 
causing many a pang of anguish and many a bitter tear to flow. 
Among the sins which at that solemn period came crowding into 
his memory, that which occasioned him the greatest agony was 
his deserting the parliament the^preceding year. " Since I did 
lie down on this bed," said he to Mr. Andrew Lamb, the bishop 
of Galloway, who visited him, " the sin that lay heaviest on my 
soul and hath burdened my conscience most, was my withdraw- 
ing of myself from the parliament, and not giving my voice for 
the truth against those things which they call indifferent ; for in 
so doing I have denied the Lord my God." But by the judicious 
counsels of Rutherford, who continued with him at the castle, 
almost from the commencement of his illness to his death, he 
was led to improve the peace-speaking blood of Christ ; and thus 
attaining to the full assurance that God in his abounding mercy 
had pardoned his sins, he enjoyed much comfort in passing 
through the dark valley of the shadow of death. A few minutes 
before its •departure, Rutherford engaged in prayer, and " in the 
time of that last prayer, his lordship was observed joyfully smi- 
ling, and looking up with glorious looks, as was observed by the 
beholders, and with a certain beauty his visage was beautified, 
as beautiful as ever he was in his life. And the expiry of his 
breath, the censing of the motion of his pulse (which the physi- 
cian was still holding), corresponded exactly with the Amen of 
the prayer, — and so he died sweetly and holily, and his end was 
peace."* 

During the whole of his illness, Lady Kenmure watched over 
him with affectionate tenderness and care. Of her kind and 
unwearied attentions, as well as of her high Christian excellence, 
he was deeply sensible. " He gave her, diverse times, and that 
openly, an honorable and ample testimony of holiness and good- 
ness, and of all respectful kindness to him, earnestly craved her 
forgiveness wherein he had offended her, desired her to make 
the Lord her comforter, and observed that he was gone before, 
and that it was but fifteen or sixteen years up or down." She 

* The Last and Heavenly Speeches and Glorious Departure of John Viscount of 
Kenmure, by Samuel Rutherford. 



72 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

felt, in a special manner, deeply anxious about the state of his 
soul. When, on the first night of Rutherford's arrival at Ken- 
inure castle, his lordship expressed to him his fears of death, and 
desired him to star with him and show him the marks of a child 
of God. " for," said he, " you must be my second in this combat ;" 
she judiciously observed, " You must have Jesus Christ to be 
your second ;" an observation in which he cordially concurred. 
At another time, when, from the hopes of recovery, inspired by 
the temporary abating of the fever, he became much less con- 
cerned about the salvation of his soul than before, it is particu- 
larly mentioned in his, " Last and Heavenly Speeches,* that 
this was to her a source of no small distress. 

Under this painful bereavement, Lady Kenmure was enabled 
to exercise a pious resignation to the will of her heavenly Father, 
all whose dispensations toward her she believed to be in wisdom 
and love, a consideration which proved her chief support and 
surest consolation under all her afflictions. In attaining to this 
desirable state of mind, she was greatly aided by Rutherford, 
Avho, while he remained at the castle, allayed her sorrow by his 
prayers and counsels, and who, on his return home, still addres- 
sing himself to the task of soothing her grief, wrote her a very 
comforting letter two days after the fatal event. "And, albeit," 
says he, " I must, out of some experience, say the mourning for 
the husband of your youth be by God's own mouth the heaviest 
worldly sorrow (Joel i. 8) ; and though this be the weightiest 
burden that ever lay upon your back, yet ye know (when the ib Ids 
are emptied, and your husband now asleep in the Lord), if ye 
shall wait upon him who hidetb his face for a while, that it lieth 
upon God's honor and truth to fill the field, and to be a husband 
to the widow." Speaking of Lord Kenmure, he says, " Remem- 
ber, that star that shined in Galloway is now shining in another 
world." And, in reference to the past trials of her life, as well 
as to the present, he observes : — " I dare say that God's hammer- 
ing of you from your youth, is only to make you a fair carved 
stone in the high upper temple of the New Jerusalem. Your 
Lord never thought this world's vain painted glory a gift worthy 
of vou ; and therefore would not bestow it on you, because he is 
to present you with a better portion. I am now expecting to 
see, and that with joy and comfort, that which I hoped of you 
since I knew you fully ; even that ye have laid such strength 
upon the Holy One of Israel that ye defy troubles, and that your 
soul is a castle that may be besieged, but can not be taken. 
What have you to do here ? This world never looked like a 



LADY KENMURE. 73 

friend upon you. Ye owe it little love. It looked ever sourlike 
upon you."* In another letter he thus writes, in reference to the 
same subject : — " In this late visitation that hath befallen your 
ladyship, ye have seen God's love and care in such a measure 
that I thought our Lord broke the sharp point oft" the cross, and 
made us and your ladyship see Christ take possession and infeft- 
ment upon earth of him who is now reigning and triumphing 
with the hundred forty and four thousand who stand with the 
Lamb on Mount Zion."f Under this bereavement, she had the 
kind condolence of " many honorable friends and worthy profes- 
sors." x 

To this nobleman, besides the three daughters, who, as we 
have already seen, died in infancy, she had a son, John, second 
viscount of Kenmure, who was served heir to his father in his 
large estates in the stewartry of Kirkcudbright, 17th of March, 
1635, and whose testamentary tutors were Archibald, marquis of 
Argyll, and William, earl of Morton. || This son was born after 
his father's death, about the close of the year 1 634, or early in 
the year 1635 ;§ and died in infancy in August, 1639, at the age 
of four years and some months. He had long before been in so 
delicate health as to excite the apprehensions of his mother, 
whose maternal solicitudes were all concentrated in her tender 
watchfulness over her infant boy. His death therefore could not 
be said to have come unexpected, nor could she be altogether 
unprepared for the stroke. But still the removal of this much 
loved and caressed child inflicted a deep wound on the affection- 
ate mother's heart. He was her only son and her only remain- 
ing child, the heir of his father's wealth and honors, and by his 
death the honors and estates of the noble house of Kenmure 
would pass into another family. All these circumstances would 
naturally intwine her affections around him, and increase the 
pangs of maternal agony when he was taken from her and 
laid in the grave. "I confess," writes Rutherford to her, " it 
seemed strange £ me that your Lord should have done that which 
seemed to ding out the bottom of your worldly comforts ; but we 

* Rutherford's Letters, pp. 68, 69. t Ibid., p. 72. t Ibid., p. 73. 

II Douglas's Peerage, vol. ii., p 27. Besides these children, it is not unlikely she 
had some others who also died in infancy. Rutherford, writing to her in 1634, s-iys 
that the Lord had taken away from her many children. — Rutherford's Letters, 
p. 78. 

§ In one of Rutherford's letters to her, dated November 29, 1634, obvious allu- 
sions are made to her being near the time of her confinement, and the child bom 
was evidently this son; for Rutherford reminds her, after his death, that she had 
got a four-years' loan of him. He would be some months more than four years 
of age. 

7 



74 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

see not the ground of the Almighty's sovereignty ; ' he goeth by 
on our right hand, and on our left hand, and we see him not.' 
We see but pieces of the broken links of the chains of his provi- 
dence ; and he coggeth the wheels of his own providence that 
we see not. Oh, let the Former work his own clay into what 
frame he pleaseth ! ' Shall any teach the Almighty knowledge V 
If he pursue the dry stubble, who dare say, ' What doest thou V 
Do not wonder to see the Judge of the world weave into one web 
your mercies and the judgments of the house of Kenmure. He 
can make one web of contraries."* God, however, does nothing 
without wise and holy reasons, and the spiritual improvement of 
his people is an end of which he never loses sight in all the 
trials with which he visits them. " But," adds Rutherford, in 
the same letter, " my weak advice, with reverence and correc- 
tion, were for you, dear and worthy lady, to see how far mortifi- 
cation goeth on, and what scum the Lord's fire casteth out of you. 
... I do not say that heavier afflictions prophesy heavier guilti- 
ness ; a cross is often but a false prophet in this kind ; but I am 
sure that our Lord would have the tin and the bastard metal in 
you removed ; lest the Lord say, ' The bellows are burnt, the 
lead is consumed in the fire, the Founder melteth in vain' " ( Jer. 
vi. 29). And in the conclusion, he thus counsels her : " It is a 
Christian art to comfort yourself in the Lord ; to say, ' I was 
obliged to render back again this child to the Giver ; and if I 
have had four years' loan of him, and Christ eternity's possession 
of him, the Lord hath kept condition with me.' " 

Lady Kenmure, on the 21st of September, 1640, nearly a year 
after the death of her son, married for her second husband the 
Honorable Sir Henry Montgomery of Gift'en, second son of Al- 
exander, sixth earl of Eglinton. This new relation proved a 
source of happiness to both. Sir Henry was an excellent man ; his 
sentiments on religious and ecclesiastical questions corresponded 
with her own ; and he is described as an " active and faithful 
friend of the Lord's kirk."t But the union, wh*;h was without 
issue, did not last long : she was soon left a widow a second 
time, in which state she lived till a very venerable age. The 
exact time of Sir Henry's death we have not discovered. Ruth- 
erford addressed a letter to her on that occasion, from St. An- 
drews, but it wants the date of the year. J Though by this sec- 
ond marriage she became Lady Montgomery, we shall take the 
liberty still to designate her " Lady Kenmure," as this is the 
name by which she is most generally known. 

■ E.utherford'8 Letters, p. 578. t Ibid-, p. 623. t Ibid., p. 623. 



LADY KENMURE. 75 

Subsequently to this, Rutherford's letters to her furnish few 
additional facts respecting her history. They contain repeated 
allusions to her bodily infirmities ; and from their tone, it is mani- 
fest that she had attained to much maturity in grace, and that " all 
the sad losses, trials, sicknesses, infirmities, griefs, heaviness, 
and inconstancy, of the creature," had been ripening her for 
heaven. There is also evidence that she continued steadfast in 
the principles of the second reformation, and adhered in her 
judgment to the presbyterian party called the " protesters," re- 
garding the policy of the " resolutioners," what it really was, as 
inconsistent with the obligations of the " Solemn League and 
Covenant," of which, if she did not enter into it, she cordially 
approved. " I am glad," says Rutherford, writing to her from 
Glasgow, September 28, 1651, "that your breath serveth you to 
run to the end, in the same condition and wav wherein ye have 
walked these twenty years past. The Lord, it is true, hath 
stained the pride of all our glory, and now, last of all, the sun 
hath gone down upon many of the prophets. ... I hear that your 
ladyship hath the same esteem of the despised cause and cove- 
nant of our Lord that ye had before. Madam, hold you there."* 

Much would it have gratified both these eminent saints to have 
lived to see " the despised cause and covenant of the Lord" hon- 
ored and prospering in the land ; but this neither of them was 
privileged to witness. Writing to her in the autumn of 1659, 
Rutherford tells her of the satisfaction it would afford him should 
God be pleased to lengthen out more time to her, that she might, 
before her eyes were shut, " see more of the work of the right 
hand of the Lord in reviving a swooning and crushed land and 
church."f More time was indeed lengthened out to her, but it was 
to see, not the work of God in reviving the church, but the work 
of man in laying it waste, and in persecuting even to the death 
its ministers and members. Her highly-esteemed correspondent 
was removed by death on the eve of these calamities, having died 
on the 20th of March, 1661, just in time to escape being put to 
an ignominious death for the testimony of Jesus. He was taken 
away from the evil to come. She survived him above eleven 
years, witnessing the desolations of the church, and though per- 
sonally preserved from the fury of persecution, she suffered bitterly 
in some of her nearest relations. 

After Rutherford was laid in the dust, she cherished his mem- 
ory with affectionate veneration, and in token of her remembrance, 
liberally extended her beneficence and kindness to his widow 
* Eutherford's Letters, p. 679. t Ibid., p. 695. 



76 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

and only surviving daughter. This we find adverted to in a let- 
ter addressed to her by Mr. Robert M'Ward, from Rotterdam, 
October 2d, but without the date of the year. " Madam," says 
he. " Mrs. Rutherford gives me often an account of the singular 
testimonies which she meets with of your ladyship's affection to 
her and her daughter. If I could (though I had never had those 
personal obligations to your ladyship which I have, and under 
which I must die undischarged), I would look on myself as 
obliged upon this account to pray that God may remember and 
reward your labor of love shown to the dead and continued to 
the living."* The letters Rutherford had written to her she care- 
fully preserved ; and when, after his death, the publication of a 
collection of his letters was resolved upon, very desirous that 
those of them in her possession should be included in the vol- 
ume, she transmitted them to Holland, to Mr. M'Ward, under 
whose superintendence the work was published at Rotterdam, in 
1664. When it was published, M'Ward sent to her a copy in 
common binding, and some time after a copy bound in morocco, 
which, however, never reached her ; on learning which, he sent 
her another copy in the same binding.! 

Soon after the restoration of Charles II., a deep wound was 
inflicted on the heart of Lady Kenmure by the cruel manner in 
which the government treated her brother, the marquis of Argyll, 
who, immediately on his arrival at Whitehall, whither he had 
proceeded from Scotland to offer his respectful congratulations to 
his majesty, was by his order thrown into the Tower of London, 
and afterward brought to trial before the Scottish parliament, by 
which he was condemned to be beheaded.;}; During the course 
of these proceedings, and subsequently to them, she received 
kind letters of condolence from several of her friends. Ruther- 
ford, on hearing of the imprisonment of her brother in the Tower, 
wrote to her from St. Andrews, July 24, 1660, saying, among 
other things, " It is not my part to be unmindful of you. Be not 

* Wodrow, MSS., vol lviii., folio. No 52. t Ibid., folio No. 56. 

t The circumstances connected with llie apprehension, trial, and execution of ttie 
marquis ;ire more fully detailed in the Sketch of the Marchioness of Argyll's Life, 
whi< h follows. In tbnse days it would appear that, like astrologers, who professed 
tn foretell the fortunes of men from the aspect of the heavens, and the influence of 
the stars, physiognomists, with equal absurdity, pretended to read men's future des- 
tiny in iheir countenances. The following instance of this may be quoted as an il- 
lustration of the foolish superstition which, at that period, existed in the hest edu- 
cated and moat enlightened circles of society : '• Alexander Colville. justice depute, 
an old sfrvant of the house, told me that my Lady Kenmure, a gracious lady, my 
lord's 'rnaiquis of Argyll's) sister, ^rom some little skill ol physiognomy, which Mr. 
Alexander had taught her, had told him some years ago that her brother would die 
in blood."— Baillie's Letters, quoted in Kiikton's History, p. 107. 



LADY KENMURE. 77 

afflicted for your brother, the marquis of Argyll. As to the main, 
in my weak apprehension, the seed of God being in him, and 
love to the people of God and his cause, it shall be well."* Af- 
ter the execution of this nobleman, Mr. Robert M'\Yard,t on his 
arrival in Holland, wrote to her a letter, in which, besides ex- 
pressing his cordial sympathy with her under this trial, he directs 
and encourages her, in reference to those dark times which had 
then come upon the church of Scotland, as well as in regard to 
those still darker days which seemed to be at hand. After ad- 
verting to the many personal and domestic afflictions she had suf- 
fered, lie adds : " And now, madam, it is apparent what the Lord 
hath been designing and doing about you in dealing so with you ; 
for, besides that he hath been thereby making your ladyship to 
be a partaker of the inheritance of the saints in light ; besides 
this, I say, which is common to your ladyship with all saints, he 
seems to have had this peculiar aim, to fit you for a piece of hard 
service ; and so your ladyship, after these more private and per- 
sonal conflicts seemed to be over, or were forgotten, hath had 
the honor amongst the first to be brought upon the stage, though 
not in your own person, yet in your honorable and deservedly 
dear relations, there to act a part very unpleasant to flesh and 
blood, even to see those who were to your ladyship as yourself, 
slain (I may say it, and it is known to be true upon the matter), 
for the word of God and their testimony which they held. Thus 
he hath not hid sorrow from your eyes, and yet there is such a 
sweet mixture in the bitter cup as no doubt gives it so delectable 

*Ru'herford's Letters, p. 707. 

t Mr. Hubert M'VVnrd, whose name has frequently occurred before, became min- 
ister of the outer High church. Glasgow, upon the death of Mr. Andrew Gray, 
who died in February, 16^6. He, and Mr. John Bnird, who became minister of 
Paisley, vden studying at the college of St Andrews, were reckoned the two I est 
scholars in all ihe college; and he maintained, through Ufei his reputation as a man 
of talent as well as of piety. Distinguished for the highly oratorical style of his 
pulpit compositions, on which he bestowed much labor, he was very popular. Re- 
ferrinir to his ornate style, a friend observed that he was " a brave busking preach- 
er;" and, on one occasion. Mr. James Rowat. minister of Kilmarnock, said to him, 
" God forgive you, brother, that darkens the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ by \ our 
firatory." M'Ward was a zealous presbylerian, and strongly opposed to the public 
resolutions As might have been expected, he did not long escape persecution afler 
the r.st nation of Charles II. Incurring the resentment of the government, for the 
freedom and fidelity with which he expressed his sentiments, in a sermon preached 
at Glasgow, from Amos iii. 2, in. February, 1661, he was brou ht before the parlia- 
ment on the 6 h of June that year ; and, on the 5th or 6th of July, they passed sen- 
tence of banishment upon him. but allowed him to remain six months in the nation. 
Removing to Holland, he became minister of the Scottish congregation in Rotter- 
dam, where, with sonie temporary interruptions, he continued to labor with dili- 
gence and success until bis death, which took place about the year 16R1 or 1 6S2. 
He was married to the widow of Mr. John Graham, provost of Glasgow.— Wod- 
row's Analects,, vol. iii-, p. 55 

7* 



78 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

and pleasant a relish that it is sweet in the belly, though not 
pleasant to the taste. Yea, he hath left your ladyship still upon 
the stage (after that worthy hath been honorably dismissed and 
taken off with the approbation of 'Well done, good and faithful 
servant,' leaving his name for a blessing to the chosen of the 
Lord, and having given a noble example of suffering with joyful- 
ness, and of resisting unto blood, striving against sin ; a mercy 
which few are like to find in this generation, wherein there is so 
strong a propension amongst all sorts to wrong the cause and 
wound their conscience before they endanger their persons), I 
say, your ladyship is left still upon the stage, not only to act pa- 
tience, and let it have its perfect work as to what is past, and 
give the world a proof that the grace of God can make a person 
endure as one whom affliction can not make miserable, whereas 
one void of such a supporting principle, would in that case carry 
as if they thought they lived for no other purpose but to see them- 
selves miserable ; but that you may act the faith and patience of 
the saints as to what is present, and in regard to what is ap- 
proaching, arming yourself with Christian courage and resolu- 
tion how to carry when ye shall see grief added to your sorrow, 
while ye behold that beautiful house wherein our fathers and we 
worshipped, thrown down, and nothing left of all that goodly 
fabric but some dark vestiges, to be wept over by them that take 
pleasure in the stones, and favor the dust of Zion. This calls 
your ladyship some way to forget the decay and (in the world's 
account, wherein things get not their right names), disgrace of 
your ever honorable family and father's house, but now more hon- 
orable than ever, that ye may remember to weep with Zion, and 
lament because the glory is "departed. the sad days that your 
ladyship is like to see if He do not shut your eyes in death, and 
receive you in amongst the company of them who have come out 
of great tribulation, and can weep no more because they see 
God ! As for your ladyship's through-bearing in this backsliding 
time, trust him with that, who hath everlasting arms underneath 
you to bear you up when ye have no legs to walk. Hitherto hath 
he helped, and he will not lose the glory of what he hath done 
by leaving you now to faint and fall off. He will not give over 
guiding you by his counsel till he have brought vou to glory, and 
put you beyond hazard of misguiding yourself."* 

Another of her relatives who suffered from the iniquity of the 
times was Lord Lorn, the eldest son of her brother, the marquis 
of Argyll. Lorn, naturally indignant at the cruel treatment which 

* Wodrow MSS., vol. lviii., fulio, No. 53. 



LADY KENMURE. 79 

his father and family had received at the hands of the parliament, 
gave free expression to his sentiments in a confidential letter he 
sent to his friend, Lord Dufius. This letter being intercepted and 
carried to Middleton, that unprincipled statesman-resolved to make 
it the foundation of a capital charge against him. Disappointed 
in his hope of obtaining the estate of the marquis of Argyll, 
which through the intercession of Lauderdale was gifted to Lord 
Lorn, who had married Lauderdale's lady's niece, Middleton 
thought he had now found a favorable opportunity of getting into 
his rapacious grasp the spoils of the Argyll family. According- 
ly, he laid the letter before the estates of parliament, which voted 
it treasonable, and sent information to his majesty, with a desire 
that Lorn, who was then in London, should be secured and sent 
down to Scotland to stand trial before the parliament. Lorn was 
ordered to return to Scotland, though, at the intercession of Lau- 
derdale, who personally became bail for his appearance, he was 
not sent down as a prisoner ; and arriving in Edinburgh on the 
17th of July, 1662, he was immediately charged to appear at the bar 
of the house on the afternoon of that day ; which he did. That 
same night he was committed prisoner to the castle, and on the 
26th of August was sentenced to be beheaded, and his lands, goods, 
and estate forfeited, for treasonable speeches and writings against 
the parliament ; the time of the execution of the sentence being 
remitted to the king. He lay in prison in the castle till Middle- 
ton's fall, when he was liberated, in June, 1663, and was soon 
after restored to his grandfather's estate, with the title of earl of 
Argyll.* During the time of Lorn's imprisonment, M'Ward 
wrote to Lady Kenmure a letter, in which, among other things, 
he particularly animadverts upon this additional instance of the 
injustice and cruelty exercised toward the noble house of Argyll. 
The portion of it relating to Lorn's imprisonment, may be quoted, 
as, besides containing a vindication of the prisoner's father, the 
marquis of Argyll, and describing the true character of the pro- 
ceedings of that unprincipled government, it illustrates the pious 
and patriotic spirit of this noble lady. " The men," says he, 
" who have sold themselves to work wickedness in the sight of 
the Lord, have stretched forth their hand against } r our ladyship's 
honorable and truly noble family. They made that worthy whose 
name is savory among his people, the butt of their malice, and 
as if that had not been enough, they persecute with deadly malice 
his honorable and hopeful posterity, that their name may be no 

* Wodrow's History, vol. i., pp. 297, 388 ; Aikman's History, vol. iv., p. 500 ; 
Row's Life of Robert Blair, p. 469. 



80 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

more in remembrance. But have they slain and also taken pos- 
session ? and will he not bring evil upon them and their posterity 
for this, and for the provocation wherewith they have provoked 
him to anger and made Israel to sin ? But what wonder that 
they have stretched forth their hand against his worthies, who 
have been honored to be singularly useful and instrumental in his 
Avork, when it is come to this, that in a land solemnly sworn 
away to God, the Son of Man hath not so much left him, even 
by law, as whereupon to lay his head, except it be upon a cnld 
stone in a prison ! We have laws now framed by the throne of 
iniquity and in force, and by these laws he must die or be driven 
away. The men who have taken first the life and then the lands 
of him whom God hath taken off the stage with so much true 
honor ; they have spoiled Christ also of his prerogative, and say, 
by what they do, ' This man shall not reign over us, we have no 
king but Ceesar ;' and his people of their privilege, saying- to 
them, ' Bow down that Ave may go over you.' I believe, Avhile 
your ladyship remembers these last, ye forget the first: how- 
ever, your ladyship, and all the rest of his honorable relations, 
may be confident and comforted in the hope of it, when he comes 
to count with these men and cause them ansAver for that laese- 
majesty Avhereof they are guilty against God, he will make in- 
quisition for blood, yea, that blood, and make them sensible how 
sadly he resents the injuries done to that house, and will, if ever 
he build up Zion and appear in his glory in the land (as I desire 
to believe he Avill), restore the honor of that family Avith such a 
considerable overplus of splendor, as shall make them who see 
it say, ' Verily, there is a reward for the righteous ; verily, he is 
a God that judgeth in the earth." But, madam, I know, since 
God hath learned to prefer Jerusalem to your chief joy (a rare 
mercy amid a generation who are crying, ' Rase it, rase it, even 
to the foundation'), that ye forget to sorrow for your father's house, 
and weep when ye remember Zion ; it no doubt makes your sigh- 
ing come before ye eat to see the ruins of that so lately beauti- 
ful fabric wherein ye, with the rest of his people, worshipped, 
Who can be but sad that hath the heart of a child to consider 
how the songs of the sanctuary are turned into howling?''* 

From the allusion in the last sentence quoted, the reader will 
perceive that, at the time when this letter was written, the pres- 
byterian church of Scotland had been overthrown. Charles II., 
had got it into his head that presbytery Avas not a religion for a 
gentleman, — an opinion of which the foundation no doubt Avas, 

• Wodrow, MS3 , vol. IviiL, folio, No. 59. 



LADY KENMUKE. 81 

what a young monarch of licentious morals could not easily brook, 
the strict surveillance which the presbyterian church exercised 
over the manners of all her members without respect of persons ; 
and no sooner was he restored to his throne than he and the base 
men selected by him for his counsellors, were determined not to 
suffer the offence and reproach of such an ill-bred religion to re- 
main in the land, no, not even in the form of a dissenting body. 
Nor was it by gradual encroachments that they resolved to sap 
the foundations of the Scottish presbyterian church. Too im- 
patient to wait the operation of slow and insidious measures, 
they proceeded openly, summarily, and by violence. Such min- 
isters as did not conform against a certain day were to be uncer- 
emoniously ejected. No soft words Avere to be employed, no 
gentle acts of persuasion were to be resorted to with the view 
of bringing them to submission. The law, with its severe pen- 
alties, which were deemed a sufficient argument, was promulgated, 
and, stern and unbending, it was to take its course on all the 
disobedient. The majority of the ministers conformed, though 
they had sworn against prelacy ; but a noble army of nearly four 
hundred of them refused compliance, preferring to suffer rather 
than to part with their integrity. They were in consequence 
driven from their people, who were thus deprived of the ordin- 
ances of the gospel, and who mourned the loss of their faithful 
pastors as a family bereavement. 

To this calamitous state of things M'Ward, in the same letter, 
proceeds to advert more particularly. He dwells upon the sor- 
row which he knew Lady Kenmure felt because her ear did not 
hear the joyful sound, nor her eyes see her teachers, and that 
she was not now made glad in the sanctuary; as in former days, 
when she had been abundantly satisfied with the fatness of God's 
house, and made to drink with delight of the rivers of his pleas- 
ure, his banner over her being love. ' You have now known 
of a long time," says he, " what it is to live and almost languish 
in a dry and thirsty land where no water is, where all the streams 
of creature contentments have been dried up, and diverted by the 
scorching heat of fiery trials. But this, I know, is the hardest 
and heaviest of all, that the streams of the sanctuary which did 
refresh the city of God are dried up, and that these ordinances 
of life in the use whereof God doth ordinarily set forth and impart 
much of his loving kindness, which is better than life, are taken 
away from you." And he concludes by observing that, " though 
he knew it to be grieving to her to see the faithful feeders put 
from their work, and God's house of prayer turned into a den of 



82 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

thieves, who come not in by the door, and how the valley of vision 
was become a dungeon of Egyptian darkness," yet that it would 
comfort her in a great measure, notwithstanding all that had 
happened, if she saw " the ministers of the Lord zealous and 
carrying like men of understanding who knew the times and 
what Israel ought to do, and not as asses crouching between the 
burdens."* 

In the welfare and happiness of the ministers ejected from their 
charges for nonconformity, Lady Kenmure took a deep interest, 
being warmly attached to the cause in which they suffered. 
Their integrity and conscientiousness in renouncing their livings 
rather than do violence to their conscience, excited both her ap- 
proval and admiration ; and if she could not restore them to the 
places from which they were extruded, she was willing, accord- 
ing to her ability, to mitigate the privations and hardships of 
their lot. After the death of her son, Lord Viscount Kenmure, 
and of her second husband, the Honorable Sir Henry Montgom- 
ery of Giffen, her pecuniary means were indeed much reduced, 
but having devoted herself and her all to the Savior who redeemed 
her, she was liberal in communicating even beyond her ability 
to the necessities of the suffering presbyterian ministers ; and 
these acts of benevolence and generosity, which she felt to be 
sacred duties, she performed with a readiness and an alacrity 
corresponding to the deep sense she had of a Savior's love. Mr. 
Robert M'Ward, among others, was a sharer of her bounty. She 
frequently sent remittances to him in his straits when he was in 
Holland, of which he makes grateful mention in most of his let- 
ters to her, as well as refers to her profuse beneficence toward 
others who suffered for righteousness' sake, and who were in 
needy circumstances. In one of his letters to her, without date, 
but which, as appears from internal evidence, was written sub- 
sequently to the martyrdom of the marquis of Argyll, and from 
Holland, after apologizing for taking the liberty of writing to her, 
he says, " It flows from an affectionate respect which your lady- 
ship's undeserved kindness and bounty toward me in my strait 
(whereof I hope to cease to be sensible, and cease to be, together), 
hath made a debt which I can never forbear to acknowledge 
(though I am not in case to requite it) without the imputation of 
baseness and ingratitude. v f In another letter to her from Rot- 
terdam, in 1668, he writes, "Your ladyship hath put me oft to 
seek what to say, but never more than by your last. I am truly 
at a loss for words to express myself about it ; and I can assure 
* Wodrow MSS., vol. lviii , folio, No. 59. t Ibid., No. 53. 



LADY KENMURB. 83 

you, madam, that it was a trouble to me to think how prodigal 
ye have been toward me at such a time. When I know well 
what the riches of your liberality are to others, and how much 
they who should give you what God hath made your own pinch 
you in withholding what they onght to give, what shall I say? 
but I see I must be among the rest, and with the first of them, 
who bear record of your doing even beyond power ; and to make 
it appear that ye have, in the first place, given your ownself unto 
the Lord, ye give, in the second place, yourself and whatever 
God hath given you, to those whom ye suppose to have given 
themselves to God. Madam, when I can neither requite these 
high favors nor deserve them, I desire to have a complacency in 
the thoughts of what a rich reward abides you from him who is 
faithful and will never forget your work and labor of love showed 
toward his name. If he will not forget a cup of cold water, 
which is given by the hand of him who boiled it before he gave 
it, in the fire of love to God which burns in his bosom, how much 
more must these great givings be an odor of a sweet smell, a 
sacrifice acceptable, and weil-pleasing unto God!"* Mr. John 
Carstairs, minister of the high church of Glasgow at the Resto- 
ration, had also received tokens of her good will. In a letter to 
his wife, May 27, 1664, from Ireland, whither he had fled to es- 
cape persecution, he says : " Present my humble service and 
tenderest respects to my noble lady Kenmure. The Lord re- 
member and graciously reward all her labor of love !"f 

Mr. M'Ward having come to London about the year 1669, 
resolved to visit some of his friends in Scotland, and among 
others Lady Kenmure. In a letter to her, without date,| but 
which was probably written from Edinburgh about the close of 
the year 1669, or the beginning of the year 1670, after informing 
her that in the beginning of winter he was advised by friends to 
withdraw from London, which he did after he had kept himself 

* Wodrow MSS , vol. Iviii., folio, No 54. 

t Letters of Mr John Carstairs, &c, edited by the Rev. William Ferrie, Anstra- 
ther Easter, p. 120. 

% The following extract from a letter of M'Ward's to Mr. John Carstairs, but 
without date, may assist us in determining the time when this letter was written 
to Lady Kenmure. Speaking of Mr. John Dickson, M'Ward says, " I have neither 
seen nor written to him since the time I went first down with you to Scotland (if I 
be not mistaken), when that wretched indulgence bad its birth (when will we see 
its burial !)" — (Wodrow MSS., vol. lvii., folio, No. 15). The only difficulty here is 
whether M'Ward refers to the first indulgence, granted in July, 1669, or to the sec- 
ond, granted in September. 1672. But from an allusion to his visiting Lady Ken- 
mure, apparently when he visited Scotland, contained in a letter lo her, dated 
March 5, 1672, more than six months before the second indulgence had an existence 
(see p . 84), it is highly probable that he refers to the first. 



84 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

almost a prisoner for some time, and that thereafter he had stayed 
in another place in England longer than he intended, he says : 
" The condition, the sad condition of this poor remnant, together 
with the desire I had once more to see some few friends, among 
whom I particularly intended to wait upon your ladyship at con- 
veniency, made me adventure to come to this place. I have 
desired the bearer* (who is the only minister, save one other, 
residing in this city to whom I have yet made myself known) to 
inquire at your ladyship when, without being a trouble or dis- 
turbance to you, I may wait upon you." He adds : " Madam, I 
have had some account from him of your condition, and though I 
know that the things which ye see and hear and daily find are 
enough to make your ladyship long for a pass, that after all your 
inward trouble and outward tossings, your tried and weary soul 
may rest in his everlasting embraces, after whom ye have been 
made to pant, and for whose coming ve are now looking ; yet I 
can not deny but that 1 am so cruel as to be content that your 
ladyship is yet with us to weep and sigh over the dust of Zion ; 
yea, I am confident you will be content to suspend your everlast- 
ing satisfaction, which is made sure to you, for some years or 
days, if you may be but helped, now when the strength of the 
bearers of burdens is gone, to lift up a prayer for a fallen church, 
and to grieve over our departed glory. '"f 

On receiving this communication, Lady Kenmure lost no time 
in intimating to her old friend and valued correspondent when he 
might wait upon her, and in giving him to understand how wel- 
come would be the sight and converse of one who had suffered 
for his Master, and by whose letters she had been instructed and 
comforted. Their meeting was agreeable and refreshing to them 
both. In M'Ward she found one who had the tongue of the 
learned, and who could speak a word in season to them that 
were weary. In her he found a Christian who, trained in the 
school of affliction, had attained to no ordinary degree of emi- 
nence in the Christian graces, and who seemed to feel more 
deeply the distressed state of the church than the bodily infirmi- 
ties which were pressing her down to the dust. To this visit 
he seems to refer in a letter which he addressed to her from 
Rotterdam, March 5, 1672, in which he mentions it as one thing 
" which did often refresh and comfort him concerning the reality 
and greenness of the grace of God in her, when he had occasion 
to see her upon her bed of languishing, namely, his finding that 
notwithstanding of all these weights and pressures of bodily infirm- 

* Probably Mr. John Carstairs. t Wodrow MSS., vol. lviii , folio, No. 57. 



LADY KENMURE. 85 

hies under which her outward man was wasting, yet Zion and 
the concerns of our Lord Jesus Christ had a chief place in her 
thoughts, she resolving to prefer his interests to her chief joy 
and greatest sorrows."* 

Lady Kenmure was now far advanced in years, and during 
her lengthened life she had seen many changes in the beloved 
church of her native land. She had beheld the triumph of its 
liberties after a protracted struggle of many years, over the arbi- 
trary power of princes, and had seen the banner of the covenant 
unfurled and floating throughout the length and breadth of Scot- 
hind. She had again witnessed these liberties prostrated and 
trampled in the dust by a monarch who was sworn to maintain 
them, and a grinding persecution carried on against such as, 
faithful to their covenant engagement, scorned to surrender them. 
But time, with its many changes, so far from altering, had only 
served to confirm her original sentiments on ecclesiastical ques- 
tions. The good old cause was still the good old cause for her. 
" Madam," says M'Ward in the letter last quoted, " as it hath 
been observed by many of your intimate Christian acquaintance 
that this hath been a piece of his gracious kindness to you to 
keep you still upon his side in an evil time, and to warm your 
soul into a good degree of holy heat and jealousy for God, his 
concerns, crown, and kingdom ; so he continues to be gracious 
to you in this matter still, and to make you a comfort to such who 
take pleasure in the dust of Zion. How great a mercy is this 
when the breath of most men, the breath of most professors, nay, 
alas, the breath of most ministers, who by their fervor should 
warm the souls of others, is so cold that it doth plainly discover 
a falling from first love, and a want of divine zeal for him, and 
fervent desire for the coming of his kingdom in the world ! This 
which he hath given you is a pearl of great price, a jewel of 
more value than the whole universe, nay, this is something above 
the reality of grace, and beyond every exercise of real grace. 
This is to carry like your father's child, when the coming of his 
kingdom is the inward echo of your soul."f 

The precise date of Lady Kenmure's death we hare not been 
able to ascertain. She was alive in August, 1672, for when Mr. 
John Livingstone, who died on the 19th of August that year, was 
giving some of his friends an account of God's goodness to him 
during the course of his earthly pilgrimage the day before his 
death, and recounting it as one of the divine mercies conferred 
upon him that he had been acquainted with many eminent Chris- 

* Wodrow MSS., vol. lviii., folio, No. 62. t Ibid., folio, lviii., No. 62. 



86 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

tians in his youth, he named two, the tutor of Bonnington, and 
Lady Kenmure, " who is," said he, " the oldest Christian ac- 
quaintance I have now alive." But she was at that time in so 
very weak and infirm a state of health that M'Ward, in a letter 
to her dated August 30, 1672, expresses his fears that it might 
possibly be his last letter to her, and whether it might come to 
her or find her in the land of the living.* 

It would no doubt be interesting to know the circumstances 
connected with the last sickness and death of a lady so eminent 
for piety ; but these have not been transmitted to posterity. We 
have, however, traced her from early life to advanced age, and 
we have seen throughout tbat whatsoever things are true, honest, 
just, pure, lovely and of good report, on these things she thought, 
and these things she practised. Although, then, we lose sight 
of her at the closing scene, we may be sure that the light of 
heaven rested upon it, dispelling the darkness of death and the 
grave ; and whether she gave utterance to the triumphant excla- 
mation of the apostle Paul, in the prospect of his departure, or 
no, that exclamation from her dying lips would have been an 
appropriate close to a life which so eminently exemplified the 
Christian graces — faith, purity, humility, charity — " I have fought 
a good fight, I have kept the faith : henceforth there is laid up 
for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous 
judge, shall give me at that day : and not to me only, but unto 
all them also that love his appearing." 



LADY MARGARET DOUGLAS, 

MARCHIONESS OF ARGYLL. 

Lady Margaret Douglas was descended from a noble family, 
of no inconsiderable antiquity and renown. Her great-grandfa- 
ther, William Douglas, sixth earl of Morton, was " a nobleman 
who inherited the magnanimity of the Douglases, tempered by 
the milder virtues of his illustrious relative, the regent Murray. 
His public conduct was marked by independence. While he 
maintained all the hospitality and even magnificence of the an- 
cient barons, his domestic arrangements were conducted, and his 
fine family reared up, in accordance with the purity of his mor- 
* Wodrow MS3., vol lviii., folio, No. 63. 



MARCHIONESS OF ARGYLL. 87 

als, and the strict regard which he uniformly showed to the du- 
ties of religion. He was a warm and steady friend to the pres- 

byterian church The sickness, which soon put an end to 

his days, prevented him from attending in his place at Perth ;* 
but he expressed his strong disapprobation of the act restoring 
episcopacy, and with his dying breath predicted the evils which 
it would entail on the country."! Her father, William, seventh 
earl of Morton, who was born in 1582, and served heir to his 
father on the 3d of July, 1605, was a nobleman of good natural 
talents, which were highly improved by a liberal education, and 
travels in foreign parts. Previous to the breaking out of the 
civil wars, occasioned by the disputes between Charles I. and 
his parliament, the earl of Morton was one of the richest and 
greatest subjects in the kingdom , arid such was the zeal with 
which he espoused the royal cause, that, to enable him to ad- 
vance money for its support, he disposed of the noble property 
of Dalkeith, and other estates, to the value of not less than one 
hundred thousand pounds Scots of annual rent. He died at Ork- 
ney, on the 7th August, 1648, in the sixty-sixth year of his age.| 
By his wife, Lady Anne Keith, eldest daughter of George, fifth 
earl Marischall, he had a numerous offspring. 

Margaret, the subject of this sketch, who was the second 
daughter, was born about the year 1610. Of her youthful years 
no memorials are known to exist ; but at an early age she was 
married to Archibald, Lord Lorn, afterward eighth earl and first 
marquis of Argyll, a nobleman of eminent piety, and a warm 
friend of the presbyterian interest, to which he adhered with un- 
wavering constancy, and for which he at last was honored to die 
a martyr. She also was distinguished for piety, and held senti- 
ments on ecclesiastical and religious questions similar to his. 
We are not exactly informed as to the time and circumstances 
in which either of them became the subject of serious religious 
impressions, but in both cases it appears to have been early. 
True religion shed its hallowed and ennobling influence over 
their domestic life, sweetening its enjoyments as well as light- 
ening its trials, and rendered their whole deportment a living 
epistle of Christ, known and read of all men. It was the custom 
of the marquis to rise at five o'clock in the morning, and to con- 

* The reference is to the parliament which met at Perth, in August, 1606, by 
which the bishops were restored to all their ancient diarni ties anil prerogatives. 

t M-Oie's Life of Melville, vol ii., p 220. James Melville designates him "the 
guid auld earle of Mortoune." — Melville's Diary, p. 560. See also Calderwood's 
History, vol. vi . p. 263. 

t Douglas's Peerage, vol. ii., pp. 193, 274, 275 j Eow's History, p. 470. 



88 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

tinue in private till eight o'clock ; and, besides family worship 
and private prayer in the morning and evening, he usually prayed 
with his lady at the same seasons, his valet and her maid-servant 
being present.* How beautiful an example of domestic piety ! 
and how excellent a means of training that pious pair for aeting 
a Christian and a noble part amid those tragic scenes through 
which they had afterward to pass, and in which they acquitted 
themselves so well ! Both of them, too, highly valued the preach- 
ing of the gospel, and the society of the eminent ministers of 
their day. As an instance of this, it may be mentioned that the 
well-known Mr. David Dickson, with his r wife and children, re- 
sided two years in their family at Inverary ; during which time 
Dickson and Mr. Gordon, the minister of the parish, divided the 
services of the sabbath between them, the former preaching in 
the forenoon, and the latter in the afternoon, while Mr. Patrick 
Simpson preached on the Thursdays.! 

The first family incident we meet with in the history of the 
marchioness of Argyll is a dangerous illness with which she was 
attacked at the time of her first confinement. The physicians 
who attended her, when consulted, gave it as their opinion that 
her life could not be preserved without destroying that of the 
child. But from this proposal the heart of the mother recoiled, 
and on no consideration would she give her consent. In the 
good providence of God, however, the life both of the mother 
and of the infant was saved. This child was afterward the earl 
of Argyll, who suffered in I6854 

During the subsequent part of her life, no important facts are 
known, till we come to the severe domestic trials which she was 
doomed to suffer. These we shall now proceed to relate. It 
has been said that every pathetic tale, in order to interest, must 
have a villain to boast of— a principle well understood by the 
masters of tragedy, who, while they excite our sympathies by 

* Wodrow's Annlecta, vol. i , p. 22. Wodrow received this informafion. Mav f, 
1702, from Mr. Alexander Gordon, who was minister of Inverary in nv y ars be- 
fore die restoration of Charles II., and who had therefore the best means of knowii e. 
Mr. Gordon also informed him that when the marquis went abroad, though but for 
one night, it was his practice to take with him his note-book and inkstand, with 
the English Notes Bible and Newman's Concordance. In another part of die Ana- 
lects, we find the following interesting notice relating to Argyll's oonverejou : " Mr. 
.lames Stirling tells me that from t:ood hands lie had it, that dming the assembly at 
Glasgow, Mr. Henderson and other ministers spent many nights in prayer with the 
marqnifi of Argyll, and that he dated either his conversion, or the knowledge of it, 
from these times." 

T Wodrow's Analecta, vol. i., p. 22. Mr. Gordon, to whom Wodrow was in- 
debted for this fact, also told him that Ara-yll always took notes of the sermon. 

t Ibid., vol. ii, p. 138. 



MARCHIONESS OF ARGYLL. 89 

the great and varied distresses of the personages they introduce 
upon the stage, almost never fail to bring prominently forward 
some character of deep depravity as the cause of these distres- 
ses ; thus enhancing the interest of the scene, by stirring- from 
their depths other emotions of our nature, such as horror and in- 
dignation at hypocrisy, treachery, cruelty, and other forms of 
vice, which may be elicited in the drama. Of this element of 
interest the life of this lady is not destitute ; and Charles II. was 
the evil genius who broke in upon its peace and happiness. 

The first of her domestic trials which we shall mention is the 
affecting case of her eldest daughter, Lady Anne. When Charles 
II. arrived in Scotland in the year 1650, Argyll, though during 
the second reformation, and down to that year, he had acted a 
conspicuous part in the defence of the presbyterian cause, and 
had been almost dictator of Scotland, yet welcomed him with the 
most devoted loyalty. He, however, at the same time, told him 
that he could not serve him as he desired unless he gave some 
decided evidence of his fixed determination to support the pres- 
byterian party, and that he thought this would be best done by 
marrying into some family of rank known to be entirely devoted 
to that interest, hinting that this would, in a great measure, re- 
move the prejudices entertained by both Scotland and England 
against him on account of his mother, who was a papist, and 
suggesting his own daughter as the most proper match for him.* 
How strangely does the ambition of worldly honor and power 
sometimes gain the ascendency over the better judgment of even 
wise and good men ! Argyll must have known enough, and more 
than enough, of the profligate character of Charles, to convince 
him that in projecting such a matrimonial alliance, he was ex- 
posing to the highest peril the happiness of his daughter for the 
prospect of gaining her the glitter of a few short years in a cor- 
rupt court. But views of ambition, and not the happiness of his 
daughter, were the motives which appear to have guided him in 
this matter. Another influence bearing on his mind was the 
principle of self-preservation. Perceiving that should those men, 
whom he had unavoidably made his enemies when almost dicta- 
tor of Scotland, be raised to places of power upon the accession 
of Charles, he would be in great danger of falling a sacrifice to 
their malice, he hoped in this way effectually to secure himself 
from all such peril. 

But his hopes of aggrandizement or safety from this source 
were castles built in the air, and they were destined to suffer a 

* Douglas's Peerasre, vol. i., p. 97. 

s* 



90 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

severe disappointment. To the proposal Charles indeed con- 
sented, and promised all fidelity. But he was too much of the 
cavalier ; he had too strong a liking for the malignant party, ever 
to think seriously of wedding with a presbyterian's daughter. 
His promise he never fulfilled, and he never intended to fulfil it. 
The consequences to the accomplished young lady were very dis- 
tressing. With the simple and unsuspecting confidence of in- 
experienced youth, she relied upon his honor and sincerity. Her 
parents had not taught her to doubt or mistrust him ; at least her 
father had not done so ; and, if her mother had warned her of her 
danger, she heeded it not: and when Charles disappointed her 
— when he appeared to her in the stern reality of his true char- 
acter, a heartless deceiver, faithless to her as he proved to the 
religion he had sworn to maintain — her mental agitation and dis- 
tress became great ; all her enchanting and fondly-cherished 
prospects of becoming the wife of Charles and queen of Britain, 
which had been the dream of her young imagination, were dissi- 
pated ; her tenderest affections were cruelly lacerated by the 
object around which they were entwined ; her earthly hopes and 
happiness seemed extinguished for ever ; her spirits sunk, and 
her health became impaired ; yea, under the extreme mental agi- 
tation she daily and hourly experienced, her reason itself began 
to reel, and she at last became quite insane, fit only " to point a 
moral or adorn a tale." 

In the calamity which befell his daughter, Argyll had too much 
reason for self-reproach. His worldly policy, which true wisdom 
condemned, while it accomplished the ruin of his daughter, was 
defeated in its every object. Kirkton, after stating that the mar- 
quis was moved to strike up this match from the hope of securing 
himself from his enemies, and that all the "poor family had by 
the bargain was a disappointment so grievous to the poor young 
lady, that of a gallant young gentlewoman, she lost her spirit and 
turned absolutely distracted," quaintly, but justly adds, " so un- 
fortunately do the back wheels of private designs work in the 
puppet plays of the public revolutions in the world."* 

This was a severe and a continued living trial to the mar- 
chioness. Whether she was favorably disposed toward the match 
we are not informed, although there is reason to believe she was 
not, and that, she entertained fears that it might be far from issu- 
ing in the happy consequences which the marquis anticipated. 
We know, at least, that plausible and insinuating as the manners 
of Charles were, she formed a very low opinion of his character 

* Kirkton's History, p. 50. 



MARCHIONESS OF ARGYLL. 91 

at an early period, indeed long before its dark features were fully- 
developed or discovered, regarding him as at once unprincipled, 
hypocritical, and revengeful. This will appear from the follow- 
ing anecdote, which rests on good authority. Charles, after he 
came to Scotland and was crowned, in 1650, became so flagrantly 
lewd in his conduct, spent so large a part of his time in drinking, 
and favored malignants so much, notwithstanding his having 
sworn the Solemn League and Covenant, that the religious peo- 
ple about the court urgently requested Argyll to take the liberty 
of freely remonstrating with him. Argyll, who had waited long 
for such an opportunity, did so one sabbath night at Stirling. Af- 
ter supper, he went in with his majesty to his closet, and there, 
with much freedom, but, at the same time, with much humility, 
laid before him the sinfulness of his conduct. Charles, so far 
from appearing to be offended, seemed serious, and even shed 
tears ; and so earnest did the matter to all appearance become, 
that they prayed and mourned together till two or three o'clock 
in the morning. The marquis, charitably entertaining the most 
favorable opinion of the character and professions of Charles, 
was disposed to congratulate himself upon his success ; and when 
he came home to his lady, who was surprised at his absence, 
and told him she never knew him stop from home till so late an 
hour, he said that he had never passed so pleasant a night in the 
world, and informed her of all that took place. But she put a very 
different construction upon the adventure, and drew very different 
conclusions from it. She believed that Charles was both insin- 
cere and vindictive ; that it was not safe to remonstrate with him, 
and that her husband had committed an offence which the mon- 
arch would never forgive. Such was her belief, and she freely 
expressed it. No sooner did she hear of Charles's professions 
of sorrow, and of the tears he shed, than she said that they were 
" crocodile tears," and that what the marquis had done that night 
would cost him his head. Nor was she mistaken. When of- 
fended at liberties taken to reprove him for his conduct, Charles 
possessed, in no small degree, the power of suppressing the 
manifestation of his feelings, and of seeming even grateful to his 
monitor ; but freedoms of this sort he was not accustomed to for- 
give, and only waited his opportunity to take revenge. From 
that moment he bore an irreconcilable hatred to the marquis, 
though the royal hypocrite, in addressing him, still continued to 
call him " father ;" and so deeply did he cherish a vindictive 
spirit for this honest admonition that, after his restoration, he ex- 
pressed his resentment of it to some, and resolved to make his 



92 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

reprover the first victim of his mortal vengeance.* Upon what 
grounds the marchioness came to such a conclusion respecting 
the character of Charles, we do not know ; but from the accuracy 
of the judgment she pronounced upon it, she must have discov- 
ered facts concerning him, which, painful as it might be to her 
to entertain such suspicions and feelings concerning him, con- 
firmed all that she had said. 

After this she was visited with a severe illness, which threat- 
ened her life, as appears from the following quotation :— " When 
the king resolved to march into England, in June. 1651, the res- 
olution was opposed by Argyll, with reasons of no' inconsiderable 
strength. But, notwithstanding this disapprobation of the meas- 
ure, he would have gone along with the king, had not his lady 
been lying at the point of death. This induced him to ask per- 
mission to remain behind, which was graciously accorded, and 
he took leave of the king at Stirling."! From this illness, how- 
ever, the marchioness recovered. 

No additional particulars of importance occur in her history 
till the restoration of Charles II. That event, which was hailed 
with unbounded joy by almost all Scotland, she could hardly 
contemplate with any other feelings than those of alarm. While 
others were giving way to the most extravagant rejoicings, she 
must have felt, from what she knew of Charles, that she, at least, 
had rather cause to mourn than to rejoice. Aware that her hus- 
band was the object of his mortal hatred, for the reason stated 
before, as well as on other accounts, she appears to have enter- 
tained some degree of anxiety about his safety ; to have felt some 
forebodings that the restoration might be, what it actually turned 
out to be, the cause of the most poignant affliction of her life. 
When many noblemen and gentlemen from Scotland went up to 
London in 1660, to congratulate his majesty upon his happy and 
sale return to his hereditary throne, the marquis sent up his 
eldest son, Lord Lorn, but did not proceed to London himself till 
he got information of the favorable reception of his son, when he 
was encouraged to repair to the capital. From this it is evident 
that the family had the impression that the marquis had incurred 
the displeasure of the monarch, and entertained some apprehen- 
sion that he was m danger. Nor were these apprehensions un- 

^t^i-HT? i^T ta * V0 '- b ? - 6 l- Wa1 ™ w induces this and another anec- 
dote given (p 36 , thu,.— • November 11, 1705-My brother tells m* that be has 
*e account* of the rnarqnis of Argyll from Mr. Hxstie. who h:,d th.-m from" Mn 
Sfo'i: :'' %' vh 7 a V n i l,e fam 'y.«t Argyll, and had them both from the 
cnioness. fc.ee also Analecta, vol. ii., p. 145. 
t Douglas's Peerage, vol. i , p. 98. 



mar- 



MARCHIONESS OF ARGYLL. 93 

founded.* No sooner did Argyll arrive at Whitehall, which was 
on the 8th of July, than, "with an angry stamp of the foot," 
Charles gave orders for his imprisonment. He was instantly 
hurried to the Tower, where he was kept close prisoner till 
toward the close of the year, when he was sent down from Lon- 
don, by sea, to Edinburgh, to be committed prisoner to the castle, 
and tried before the Scottish parliament for high treason. His 
trial commenced on the 13th of February, 1061, when his indict- 
ment, consisting of fourteen different articles, was read, in which 
he is charged with calling, or causing to be called, the conven- 
tion of estates, in 1643, and entering into the Solemn League 
and Covenant with England ; with protesting in parliament 
against the engagement of 1648, for relieving his majesty 
Charles I. ; with raising an army to oppose the engagers ; with 
corresponding with Cromwell, and submitting to the common- 
wealth ; together with other crimes, which were either a perver- 
sion or misrepresentation of facts, or direct calumnies, as, for 
instance, that he had been accessory to, or acquainted with, the 
design of the murder of Charles I. These were the ostensible 
grounds of the proceedings against him ; but it was private and 
personal reasons, not avowed, which impelled the actors in this 
tragedy. Charles II., as we have seen, hated him for the free- 
dom of his admonitions, as well as because he was opposed to 
the malignants, and the main support of the presbyterian interest, 
of which he proved himself the uncompromising champion ; and 
this hatred was deepened from the wrong which Charles was 
conscious of having done to him and his family in violating his 
promise of marrying Lady Anne, for unprincipled men uniformly 
hate those whom they have injured. This throws a flood of 
light upon the conduct of Charles toward him ; it explains " the 
angry stamp of the foot;" and warrants the assertion that he 
" died a sacrifice to royal jealousy and revenge."! Middleton, 
too, who was his majesty's commissioner at the parliament, 
being at once poor and avaricious, expected to obtain a grant of 
the estates of the martyr, and hence his anxiety, in order to get 
them forfeited, and thus wrested from the lawful heirs, that the 
marquis should suffer as a regicide. It is also to be added, that 

* As a curious instance of ihe superstitious regard paid to omens at that time, we 
may quote the following passage from BaJllie's Letters. Speaking of Argyll, he 
says: " My good-son, Mr. Robert Watson, was with his lady in Roseneath, the 
night t lie king landed in England. He told me all the dogs that day did take a 
strange howling and staring up to my lady's chamber windows for some boors 
together "—Quoted in Kirkton's History, in a note by the Editor, p. 107. 

t Kirkton's History, pp. 69, 70. 



94 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

Middleton's associates in the Scottish government desired to 
divide the estates among themselves.* Thus it was determined 
on all hands to make this nobleman a sacrifice. 

When the marquis was lying a prisoner in the castle, the 
marchioness entertained the worst apprehensions as to the inten- 
tions of his enemies. She was persuaded that they would be 
satisfied with nothing less than his life, and she, therefore, with 
a number of spirited gentlemen, entered into a plan for effecting 
his escape. In the execution of this plan she herself was to act 
the principal part. On visiting him she was to put on his clothes 
and remain in prison, while he was to put on hers and, thus 
disguised, make his escape, which could be the more easily 
effected, as they were of the same stature. In order the more 
effectually to remove suspicion, he kept bod for some days, as if 
he had been unwell, and one day when she came in a chair to 
visit him, they resolved to make the attempt. Being left alone, 
they proceeded to undress and exchange each other's clothes. 
This done, she was ready to remain in his place, whatever she 
might suffer from the resentment of the government. But her 
purpose was defeated by the marquis himself, who, when about 
to be taken out in the chair, on a sudden changing his mind, 
said he would not flee from the cause he so publicly owned, and 
throwing aside his disguise, put on his own clothes, resolving to 
suffer the uttermost.f Thus she left the prison without having 
effected the object which lay so near her heart. What she 
dreaded was soon realized. On Saturday, the 25th of May, he 
was sentenced to be beheaded at the cross of Edinburgh for high 
treason on Monday, the 27th, and his head to be fixed on the 
west end of the tolbooth, where the head of the marquis of Mon- 
trose had formerly been exhibited as a spectacle. He was then 
sent to the tolbooth among the ordinary prisoners for the two 
short days allowed him to prepare for death.| 

The distress of the marchioness on hearing of this sentence is 
not to be described. On learning where he was to be confined 
during the brief period he had to live, she hurried to the prison 
in order to meet him. She was there before he reached it, and 
on his entrance a most affecting interview took place between 

* Douglas's Peerage, vol i , p 99. Wodrow's History, vol i , p. 131 
t Kiiktou's History, p 103 Wodrow's Hisiory, vol, i . p. 152 Burnet's His- 
tory, vol. i., p 124 Burnet says, that when the marquis was poine into the chair, 
he apprehended he should be discovered, and his execution hastened, and so his 
heart failed him." 

t Wodrow's History, vol. i., p. 150. Sir George M'Kenzie's Memoirs of the 
Affairs of Scotland, p. 40. 



MARCHIONESS OF ARGYLL. 95 

them. "They have given me till Monday," said he, on seeing 
her, "to be with you, my dear, therefore let us make for it." 
The alHicted wife, in the agony of grief, burst into a flood of 
tears, and, embracing him, exclaimed, il The Lord will require 
it, the Lord will require it." On her uttering this appeal to the 
justice of Heaven, which we conceive was nothing but the simple, 
unpremeditated, and instinctive outburst of nature, under a sense 
of such unmerited and grievous wrong, and which neither Chris- 
tian principle nor Christian feeling condemned, a minister pres- 
ent, doubtless with the best intentions, gently reminded her that 
we should not be revengeful, to whom she replied : " We need 
not. be so," alluding to the words of Paul, " Dearly beloved, avenge 
not yourselves but rather give place to wrath; for it is written, 
Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord."* Her distress, 
in these painful circumstances, was so deeply affecting, that even 
the bailie who accompanied the marquis to the prison, though 
no great friend to him, was softened into tears, and none in the 
room could refrain from giving vent in a similar way to their 
feelings. Meanwhile the marquis, though at first he wept him- 
self, soon became perfectly composed, and endeavored to comfort 
his beloved and sobbing wife. " Forbear, forbear," said he affec- 
tionately to her ; " truly I pity them ; they know not what they 
are doing : they may shut me in where they please, but they 
can not shut out God from me : for my part I am as content to 
be here as in the castle, and as content in the castle as in the 
Tower of London, and as content there as when at liberty ; and 
I hope to be as content upon the scaffold as any of them all." 
He added, that " he remembered a scripture cited to him by an 
honest minister lately in the castle, and endeavored to put it in 
practice. When Ziklag was taken and burnt, and the people 
spake of stoning David, he encouraged himself in the Lord his 
God."f 

After this interview, on the same day, the marchioness went 
down to the abbey, to Middleton, his majesty's commissioner, 
to endeavor to obtain a reprieve. The object in asking this 
reprieve, no doubt, was to get. time to apply to the king for a 
pardon. But when it is considered that the parliament, of which 
Middleton was the moving spring, refused to accede to the 
request which the marquis made when at the bar and about to 
receive his sentence, that the sentence should not be executed 
till ten days after it was pronounced, there was little ground to 

* Wodrow's History, vol i , p. 153. Wodrow MSS , vol. xxvii., folio, No. 53. 
t Wodrow's History, voL i., p. 152. 



96 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

hope that his lady -would succeed in obtaining for him what she 
sought. But where his life was involved she determined to 
make an appeal to Middleton's pity, if not to his sense of justice. 
She accordingly went down with a heavy heart to Holyrood 
house, and was admitted to see him. He had been drinking 
hard, but was in the full possession of his reason, and received 
her with extreme courtesy and kindness, which was far from 
his usual manner of receiving supplicants, and it seemed as if 
there was no favor which he would be unwilling to grant at her 
request. Her courteous and respectful reception might perhaps 
awaken in her for a moment hopes that he would commiserate 
her case ; but she had a man to deal with whose heart was never 
softened by compassion, and who was not accustomed to show 
mercy. When she proceeded to tell him her errand, pathetic as 
was the appeal she made in behalf of her condemned husband, 
he told her that he could not serve her in that particular ; that to 
do so would be as much as his life was worth ; and that though 
he should grant her what she so earnestly desired it would be 
fruitless, for he had received three instructions from the king 
which he was imperatively required to carry into effect : first, to 
rescind the covenants ; secondly, to behead the marquis of Argyll ; 
and, thirdly, to sheath every man's sword in his brother's breast. 
The proverb is, Post vimim Veritas. Middleton had thus impru- 
dently betrayed the intentions of his master to the marchioness ; 
and the following day, remembering after having slept off his 
night's debauch, what he had said to her, he became so dejected 
that for several days he was not to be spoken with, and told some 
of his friends that he had discovered a part of his secret instruc- 
tions to the lady of Argyll w r hich would ruin him. But she took 
no advantage of him, having told this only to Mr. Gillies, who, 
as Wodrow thinks, was waiting on her at that time ; and accord- 
ingly it went no farther.* 

From what Middleton said to her all her hopes of the life of 
the marquis were lost. She perceived that his death had been 
resolved upon, and that nothing was to be expected either from 
the justice or the compassion of the men who were now at the 
head of affairs, and who were carrying things with such a high 
hand. Hastening to the prison, she communicated to him the 
unsuccessful result of her visit to the palace. But painful as was 
this death-blow to her hopes of his life, it was in some degree 
consoling to her that he was prepared for the fate awaiting him. 
She found him not agitated with fear, nor sinking beneath the 
* Wodrow's Analecta, vol. i , pp. 67, 68. See Appendix, No. II. 



MARCHIONESS OF ARGYLL. 97 

abject influence of conscious guilt, but, though surrounded by 
prison walls, and soon to undergo an ignominious execution, yet 
enjoying that serenity and joy of mind which conscious inno- 
cence and the peace of God never fail to impart ; and this was 
the more remarkable from his being naturally of a timorous dis- 
position. She continued with him, it would appear, till sabbath 
night, when, at his own desire, she took a last farewell.* 

In this season of deep distress, the marchioness, like a genu- 
ine child of God, betook herself to the throne of grace ; and it 
is an interesting trait in her character to find her there imploring 
from Him, who " is a present help in the time of trouble," sup- 
port and comfort, not so much for herself, as for her beloved hus- 
band, who, though guilty of no crime, was so soon to suffer a 
traitor's death. On the forenoon of the day on which he was to 
be executed, she and Mr. John Carstairs were employed in wrest- 
ling with God in his behalf, in a chamber in the Canonsgate, 
earnestly pleading that the Lord would now seal his charter by 
saying to him, " Son, be of good cheer, thy sins are forgiven 
thee !" It is a striking circumstance that, at the very time of 
their being thus employed, the marquis, while engaged in set- 
tling some worldly affairs, a number of persons of quality being 
present with him, was visited in his soul with such a sense of 
the Divine favor, as almost overpowered him ; and, after in vain 
attempting to conceal his emotions by going to the fire and be- 
ginning to stir it with the tongs, he turned about, and melting 
into tears, exclaimed, " I see this will not do ; I must now declare 
what the Lord has done for my soul ! He has just now, at this 
very instant of time, sealed my charter in these words, ' Son, be 
of good cheer, thy sins are forgiven thee !' " This comfortable, 
state of mind he retained to the last, and to this scene he allu- 
ded in his dying speech on the scaffold. Can it be doubted that 
the bestowment of the very blessing, prayed for by this devout 
lady and that godly minister to the dying martyr, at the very in- 
stant in which it was sought, was a signal answer to their believ- 
ing prayers ?f 

Surviving friends have naturally a concern that due honor be 
paid to the dead in the form of a decent and respectable funeral ; 
and after the execution of this noble martyr, the marchioness 
was anxious that due homage should be paid to his mortal re- 
mains. After he was beheaded his headless corpse was delivered 
to those friends, noblemen, and others, who, at his desire, were 
permitted to accompany him to the scaffold and be present with 

* Wodrow's History, vol. i., p. 153. t Wodrow's Analecta, vol. ii., p. 148. 

9 



98 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

him on it ; and they carried it to the Magdalene chapel, where 
it was prepared for interment. From the chapel it was attended 
by a numerous company of friends, in funeral procession, to Kil- 
patrick, thence transported by water to Dunoon, and finally de- 
posited in its last resting-place, in the family burying-vault at 
Kilmun.* But it was distressing to the marchioness to think, 
that the head of the marquis was exposed as a public spectacle, 
and she was extremely desirous that it should be removed, and in- 
terred with the rest of the body. With this view, her daughter, 
Lady Mary, countess of Caithness, went to Middleton, to suppli- 
cate that this favor might be granted to her mother and the fam- 
ily. But he received her in a different manner from that in 
which he had received her mother. When she was on her 
knees before him, begging, with all the tenderness of filial piety, 
her dead father's head to be buried, he brutally threatened to 
kick her with his foot if she did not rise and depart from his 
presence.! What a picture of a man (if we may call him a man), 
who could thus treat with cruel and wanton insult a lady, in cir- 
cumstances which, one might think, would have excited compas- 
sion in the breast of a monster ! Argyll's head continued fixed 
on the west end of the tolbooth till 1664, when a letter came from 
the king to the privy council, commanding them to take it down, 
that it might be buried with his body. It was accordingly taken 
down quietly in the night-time. :{: 

Under this heavy trial the marchioness was very generally and 
sincerely sympathized with throughout the country ;|| and her case 
was well calculated to excite sympathy. What must she have 
suffered in her mind from the time that the marquis was thrown 
into the Tower of London, to the time when he was beheaded 
as a traitor, at the cross of Edinburgh ? Can it be doubted that 
she was made to taste, drop by drop, more than the bitterness of 
death, in the protracted agony which these proceedings inflicted 
on her soul ? The tragic scene of his execution could not fail 
often to present itself to her imagination, piercing the heart with 
the bitterest anguish ; and when she turned from that scene to 
reflect on her own condition, she must have found herself " a 
widow indeed." But severe though the trial was, she rebelled 
not against the Supreme Disposer of events, but acquiesced in 
his determinations, from a persuasion that though these, in some 

* Sir George M'Kenzie's Memoirs of the Affairs of Scotland, p. 47. Aikman's 
History of Scotland, vol. iv.. p. 187. 

t Kirkton's History, p. 156. t Bow's Life of Robert Blair, p. 169. 

|| " All did compassionate bis religions lady and children.'' — Row's Life of Rob- 
ert Blair, p. 3S5. 



MARCHIONESS OF ARGYLL. 99 

respects, might l>o mysterious and incomprehensible to her, they 
were yet the determinations of her heavenly Father, who doeth 
all things well. The exemplary resignation she displayed, and 
which everybody admired, is fully attested by contemporary wri- 
ters. Law, for example, in his Memorials, when recording the 
death of the marquis, says : " His lady, Margaret Douglas, a 
lady of singular piety and virtue, bore this sad stroke with other 
both personal and domestic afflictions, with great patience, and 
incredible fortitude, giving herself always to prayer and fasting, 
and ministering to the necessity of the saints."* Various cir- 
cumstances connected with the death of the marquis would, no 
doubt, contribute to produce this desirable state of .mind. It was 
comforting to her to reflect that no evil deed of his had merited 
such cruel treatment. ; that he died, not as a traitor to his country 
or his king, but in reality as a martyr in the cause of Christ. It 
was comforting to her also to know that he met death with a 
heroism which has never been surpassed in the annals of mar- 
tyrdom ; a heroism not inspired by a passion for earthly renown, 
like that of the patriots of Sparta, Rome, and Athens, hut by the 
peace of God which dwelt in his soul, and the hope of eternal 
glory, with which he was animated.! Her pious friends, both 
ministers and others, would also contribute much, by pi-esenting 
to her mind the various sources of consolation opened up in the 
gospel, to allay the bitterness of her grief, and to produce sub- 
mission to the Divine will. Among those who were thus useful 
to her, we must not omit to mention Mr. John Carstairs, a man 
of strong sympathies, to whom it. was always a pleasing duty to 
condole with, and comfort the suffering, the sorrowful, and the 
bereaved. Writing to her in reference to this dispensation, he 
says, " He [God] hath given the highest security ' that all things' 
(having a special look at all their afflictions, as the context, in 
the confession of most, if not all, judicious commentators putteth 
beyond debate) ' shall work together for good to them that love 
God, and are the called according to his purpose ;' where he hath, 
to speak so with reverence to his majesty, condescended some 
way to abridge his own sovereignty and absolute dominion, en- 

* Law's Memorials, p. 10. 

t Sir George M'Kenzie, one of bis counsel, having told hint, a little before bis 
deatb, that, it was believed be was a coward, and would die timorously, be replied 
tbat be would not die as a Roman braving death, but that be would die as a Clm's- 
tian, without being affrighted. In proof of his mental tranquillity on the scaffold, it 
may be stated that be addressed the spectators without tbe least apparent agita- 
tion, using bis ordinary gestures; and that bis physician, who touched his pulse, 
found it beating at tbe usual rate, calm and strong. — Sir George M'Kenzie's Mem- 
oirs of the Affairs of Scotland, p. 47. Burnet's Own Times, vol. i., p. 179. 



100 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

gaging himself by covenant, that though he may do what he will, 
yet he shall will to do nothing but what shall be for his people's 
good ; so that in all his dispensations toward them, his absolute 
dominion and his good will shall be commensurable and of equal 
extent, the one of them never to be stretched one hair's breadth 
beyond the other. And even in the most dark, involved, intri- 
cate, abstruse, and mysterious providences wherein they can read 
and take up least of his mind, and wherein he (seeming to walk 
either in the greatest absoluteness of his dominion, or in the sharp- 
est severity of his justice) refuseth to give a particular account 
of his matters and motions, he hath wonderfully stooped and con- 
descended to give this general, sweetly satisfactory account, that 
they shall work for good, even their spiritual good and profit, to 
the purging of sin, and their further participation of his holiness."* 
The same writer further says to her, " What possible loss or 
want is it that can not be made up in Him, who is God all-suffi- 
cient, and in whom, whatever is desirable and excellent among 
the creatures, is to be found in an eminently transcendant and 
inlinitely more excellent way ; and from whom, as the inexhaust- 
ibly full fountain, and incomprehensibly vast, immense, storeless, 
boundless, and bottomless ocean of all delightful, desirable, im- 
aginable, and possible perfections, the small drops, and little riv- 
ulets of seeming and painted perfections, scattered among the 
creatures, issue forth. "f 

Not much longer than a year after the execution of the mar- 
quis, she met. with another trial in her eldest son, Lord Lorn, 
who, like his father, was tried before the Scottish parliament, 
and condemned to be beheaded, but the sentence was not exe- 
cuted.! 

* Carstair's Dedication of Mr. James Durham's Posthumous Treatise on the Ten 
Commandments " to tl>e right honorable, truly noble, and rennwtiedlv religions lady, 
m\ lady marchioness of Argyll." In thi9 dedication, Carsiairs also says, " Madam, 
beins fully persuaded that this savory, sound, solid, soul-searching, and soul-settling 
treatise will be acceptable to and improved by jour ladyship, for furtherance of this 
your spiritual good and advantage, beyond what it will be to and by most others, I 
find no need of any long consultation with myself to whom to address its dedica- 
tion, you having, in my poor esteem, on many accounts, the deserved preference of 
many (to 6ay no more) ladies of honor now living; and since, wiilml, I nothing 
doubt, had the precious and now peifected author been alive, and minded the pub- 
lication of it with a dedication lo any uolde lady, yourself would have been the per- 
son ; of whom, I know, he had a high esteem, having himself, before his death, eig- 
nilied his purpose of dedicating his piece on the Canticles to your ladyship's noble, 
and much noted sister-in-law, my lady viscountess of Kenmure. It needs no epis- 
tles of commendation to yon, who was so thoroughly acquainted with its author; 
the readingof it will abundantly commend itself, and as a piece, though posthumous, 
of his work, commend him in the gates.'" 

t Carstair's Dedication of Mr. James Durham's Posthumous Treatise on the Tea 
Commandments. t See Appendix, No. III. 



MARCHIONESS OF ARGYLL. 101 

It maybe proper here to say something concerning the worldly 
circumstances of the marchioness on her becoming a widow. A 
little before going out to the place of execution, the marquis wrote 
and subscribed a letter to the king, in which he casts the deso- 
late condition of his poor wife and family upon his majesty's 
royal favor ; " for," says he, " whatever may be your majesty's 
displeasure against myself, these, I hope, have not done anything 
to procure your majesty's indignation. And since that family have 
had the honor to be faithful subjects and serviceable to your royal 
progenitors, I humbly beg my faults may not extinguish the last- 
ing merit and memory of those who have given so many signal 
proofs of constant loyalty for many generations. Orphans and 
widows, by special prerogative and command from God, are put 
under your protection and defence, that you suffer them not to be 
wronged."* But notwithstanding this letter, there is reason to 
believe that had it been left entirely to Charles himself, who 
cared nothing about orphans and widows, the marchioness and 
her fatherless children would have remained in poverty, and de- 
pendent upon the bounty of others ; while Middletou would have 
been revelling on the rental of their estates. Lauderdale, hovr- 
ever, whose lady's niece, as has been observed before,! was the wife 
of Lord Lorn, the eldest son of Argyll, succeeded in obtaining 
for the noble widow and her family their rightful property. A 
writer on that period, speaking of the condemnation, forfeiture, 
and execution, of the marquis, says : " Nor could all the 
great power and interest which the duke of Lauderdale had at 
court ward off this terrible blow, though he procured a gift of the 
forfeiture from his majesty to the earl of Argyll and his creditors, 
to be applied in the following manner: 1. Fifteen thousand 
pounds of free yearly rent was granted to the earl himself. 2. 
Allowance was made for payment of mortgages or proper wad- 
setts. 3. For such debts as were owing by the earl himself, or 
for which he was bound jointly with his father. 4. For my lady 
marchioness's provision by her marriage settlement, and for the 
portions of the younger children of the family ; and the remain- 
der of the estate was appointed to be equally divided among the 
late marquis's children. "| 

The marchioness of Argyll was thus placed in such circum- 
stances as rendered her independent, and put it in her power to 
exercise liberality to others to a considerable extent. 

* Wod row's History, vol. i.. p. 154. t See p. 79. 

| Memoirs of Sir Evven Cameron of Locheill, by Mr. John Drummoud, pp. 167 
170, 195. 

9* 



102 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

She survived the marquis nearly seventeen years, preserving 
during that period both the form and spint of widowhood. Ta- 
king up her residence at Roseneath, and living for the most part 
in retirement, she spent the remainder of her days in devotion 
and good works, conducting her family on the strictest princi- 
ples of religion, attending the public and private means of grace 
with great regularity, ministering to the necessities of the dis- 
eased, the poor, and the persecuted, with affectionate liberality, 
bearing all the afflictions which befell her with exemplary pa- 
tience, and giving evidence by her whole deportment that she 
was under the influence of pure and undefiled religion. 

We are furnished with an account of the manner in which her 
widowhood was spent, by Mr. Neil Gi.llics, indulged minister of 
the parish in which she resided,* in a letter to a friend after her 
death. The chief design of the letter is to give some account of 
the circumstances connected with her last illness ; but it is pre- 
ceded by the statement of a few facts relating to her life. After 
observing that his purpose was not to give any large account of 
the Lord's dealing with this lady, whom he designates the " truly 
noble and worthy, now glorified lady marchioness of Argyll," in 

* Mr. Neil Gilli s had become indulged minister of Boseneafh previous to tb- year 
1679. He was afterward removed to Cardross, upon a petition of the heritors and 
inhabitants of that parish to the privj council — (Wodrow 's History, vol iii., pp. 24, 
156.) He continued in Cardross till 1690. when he was translated to the inner high 
church of Giaspow. In their reasons for his translation, the people of Glasgow urge 
his peculiar fitness or, these grounds : "1. Th- acceptablenessof his ministerial gifts 
to the people here, who have often heard him. 2. Hi? converse since he left the 
college, these thirty years past, has b en not only with ihe best but also ihe great- 
est, and those in most public employments, in both this kingdom and Kngland, and 
so he must, be more Iii for such a public place as this 3. His prudence, patience, 
meekness, and healing temper, which the animosi'ies and difficulties of this place 
call so loud for." Tbey add. that •' upon the f iresnid accounts, the late faithful, now 
glorified Mr. Rogers, who knew both him and this place so well, did move vigor- 
ously for him, while he lived : and on bis deathbed, and very near his end. being 
consulted by the eldership about his successor, did seriously recommend him as tbe 
lift- st be could think upon." — (Wodrow MSS , vol xxviii., 4fn, No. 32.) Mr Gil- 
lies died in 1701. He was a very serious and impressive preacher, as may be gath- 
ered from the two following anecdotes which Wodrow has preserved: " One time 
Mrs. Luke heard him either preaching on these words. 'Good will to men.' or he 
cited them, and enlarged on them in a holy rapture: and was running out upon the 
infinite love and condescension in good will to men, and repeated it once or twice — 
' Good will to men, and good will to me ! O how sweet is this !' A woman long 
under distress, but serious, cried out. ' And to me also !' — and this was the beginning 
of her gracious outgate" (her deliverance from despondency). — Wodrow's Analecta, 
vol iv.. p. 4">. At another time, " when he heard, betwixt sermons on a sabbath 
day, tli.it Mr. Robert Langlands, about a year previous transported from the barony 
to Elgin of Moray, was dead ; after singing, when he began prayer, bo said to tl is 
purpose: ' Lord, what wilt thou do with us? It serins thou art resolved to flit 
from among us, when thou art packing up s me of thy best plenishing !' And the 

tears dropped down from his cheeks on Mr. Simon Kelly, minister at . then 

precentor, who relates this. It was in 1697 or 1698." — Wodrow's Analecta, vol ii., 
p. 331. 



MARCHIONESS OF ARGYLL. 103 

her last sickness, but only some brief hints, the writer goes on to 
say : " Neither shall I stay to tell you before this what is so well 
known to all who knew or heard tell of her, how much the Lord 
had enabled her to bear many a heavy cross, through a long tract of 
time during her widowhood, besides what had passed the rest of 
her life, which seldom wanted some remarkable cross. 01 her 
it might well be said that she had endured a sore, a tedious, and 
constant light of atllictions (old ones continued and new ones fre- 
quently superadded), yet was she enabled to bear through with 
that faith, patience, submission, and Christian magnanimity, -that 
were very visible, commendable, and exemplary, and (which I 
can not forget, being a thing that 1 often admired) such diligence 
and assiduity in following the duties of praying, reading, heaping, 
praise, all the acts of worship, a constant waiting upon all ordi- 
nances and duties, public and private, and even upon the weekly 
catechizing, at which she delighted to be present, and by which 
she confessed that she had ever profiled much : all these she so 
attended that it was a rare thing to find her in an omission as to 
any of them. And as if a child under the inspection of a teacher, 
or one put to task (and indeed she did task herself), so did she 
follow and keep close to these duties, being conscious that she 
had One who stood over her head always, that was witness to 
all her ways, to whom she must ere long give an account of 
herself. 

" The rest of her time she did spend in overseeing her chil- 
dren or grandchildren (of which there were still a number about 
her), and Christian entertainment of such as came to visit her, 
with such exemplary gravity and sobriety, and other good enter- 
tainment, as was much observed and commended ; and moreover, 
her cheerfully welcoming and helping such as came for help or 
advice for their bodily diseases. For this she was so famous, 
that they came frequently and in great numbers. Of such she 
never wearied, nor was dissatisfied with their coming, except in 
so far as they did disappoint themselves (as she in her humility 
deniedly expressed it) by putting such confidence in her skill, 
which she said was no skill ; yet the experience that so many 
had, of the Lord's blessing, with good success, the advices and 
helps she gave brought so many to her, who seldom missed of 
the intent of their coming, and divers of them would have within 
some time returned to show what the Lord had done to them by 
her means, and to give her thanks, for which she was very thank- 
ful to Him who had so blessed what she did. And that she might 
be the more useful this way, she had always good store of medi- 



104 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

caments beside her — many of them brought from the apotheca- 
ries, but most of them she caused make herself, never adventur- 
ing to give anything but what she knew was safe, and could do 
no hurt. 

" Neither was she behind any in ihe generation for charity to 
the poor distressed, especially to such as were of the household 
of faith. Great numbers of poor people did flock to her; nor 
could the coldest weather and most dangerous storms hinder them 
to come to her from afar, although they knew they were to pass 
over ferries (the place of her residence bring surrounded with 
waters), and it was the observation of neighbors about that her 
bein<r there brought multitudes on them ; but to these she was so 
liberal, as I need only say that I am persuaded she gave with as 
much Christian compassion as any, 'drawing out the soul to the 
hungry,'* &c, and that the receivers themselves were ofttimes 
astonished when they got so largely, as that in many miles they 
got not so much from all as from her alone, and it was the admi- 
ration of many how this could hold out with her ; but God blessed 
all. And when sometimes it was told her that many of tliose 
she gave to were but cheats and rogues (as indeed many of them 
were), she would freely answer : 'While we have opportunity, 
let us do good to all men, but especially to the household of faith,' 
and that she gave what she gave to them, not as to cheats, but as 
to needy persons ; and that if she gave with a single eye she 
would be accepted, whatever they were, and whatever use they 
made of what she gave ;f yet did she little regard profane, randy 
beggars, though even these still got something by her order ; and 
when she met with any whom she had ground to believe were 
of the household of faith, to these she was most liberal, and gave 
them with such compassion and kindness as did show what a 
living member of Christ's body she was. 

" While she was daily exercised for most part as I have now 
hinted, she did not trouble herself with household affairs (except 
in causing provide things necessary for housekeeping), having 

* Isaiah lviii. 10. 

t It is obvious tbat this does not mono that she intended by tier liberal i'y to en- 
courage ibe idle, who, if willing:, minht have supported themselves, or to furni-h the 
vicious with the menus of dissipation ; but simply, that when she saw men in mis- 
ery, she felt herself bound to relieve them, although she could not ill every ca ; e pre- 
vent them from making a bad use of what she gave. Libernlity on_ht. no donbt, to 
be exercised with discretion as well as with kindness — an important prii ci| le to be 
observed in this department of wi ll-doins! : fir to give without reflection, or capri- 
ciously, may do more harm than good — may make the idle still more ii dolonf, and 
the vicious still more depraved, and may thus increase wretchedness in the attempt 
to relieve it. But still, even the proHio'ate and abandoned, when in misery, must 
not be left to perish. 



MARCHIONESS OF ARGYLL. 105 

laid over these matters entirely on some whom she trusted, of 
whose skill and fidelity she had long experience ; and her being 
exonered of this care and burden she often acknowledged as a 
great ease to her, and a great help to her, being taken up with 
things of another nature, which was her main work and de- 
light."* _ 

Such is the description given of the ornamental character of 
this lady, by a contemporary who knew her well. Baptized into 
the spirit of Jesus Christ, who went about doing good, she was 
not only attentive to the duties of personal piety, but unwearied 
in the performance of the great duties of charity and benevolence. 
" When the ear heard her, then it blessed her ; and when the 
eye saw her, it gave witness to her ; because she delivered the 
poor that cried, and the fatherless, and him that had none to help 
him. The blessing of him that was ready to perish came upon 
her; and she caused the widow's heart to sing for joy." Imita- 
ting Him who " maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the 
good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust," she made 
it her business to minister to the welfare of even the undeserv- 
ing. Such was the temper and conduct inspired by the religion 
which she professed, and such was the spirit of the religion 
which Charles and his government misrepresented as fanaticism, 
sedition, rebellion, and labored, by the violence of persecution, 
to crush and extinguish. 

It thus appeared how eminently instrumental all the afflictive 
events which had befallen this noble widow had been in promo- 
ting her spiritual improvement. Accompanied by the Divine 
blessing, they were in her case productive of those happy fruits, 
which, left to themselves, they will never naturally produce. 
Another minister, Mr. John Carstairs, who was also personally 
acquainted with her, addressing her only four years previous to 
her death, bears testimony in like manner to the distinguished 
progress she had made in Christian excellence, through the in- 
fluence of adverse dispensations. In the document from which 
we have before quoted,! after observing that the King of Saints 
'•has imposed upon every cross that his people meet with, not 
excepting (to say so) vessels of the greatest burden of affliction 
that sail up and down the sands, as it were, of the troublesome 
sea of this world, the toll and custom of some spiritual good to 

* Wodrow MSB , vol. xxvii., 4to, No. 27. This document is in the handwriting of 
Mr. Gillir-s, as appears from comparing it with another paper, which Wodrow 
marks as in the handwriting of that minister. 

t Carstaiis" Epistle Dedicatory prefixed to Durham's Posthumous Exposition of 
the Ten Commandments. 



106 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

be paid to them," and after giving expression to a wish "that all 
the graciously sincere lovers of God, and the effectually called 
according to his purpose, might be persuaded and prevailed with, 
to set themselves down at the receipt of these customs, from the many 
crosses and afflictions that come in their way, with a fixed reso- 
lution to suffer none of them to pass without paying the custom 
imposed by the King," Carstairs goes on to say : " It is now, no- 
ble madam, a long time, not far from toward thirty years (what- 
ever was before), since your ladyship was known by some to be 
helped, through grace, seriously to sit down at the receipt of 
these customs from the cross and afflicting dispensations which 
then occurred to you, whereby ye did observably improve, better 
and increase your spiritual stock and state, some way to the ad- 
miration of standers-by ; and since that time, for most part of it, 
you have been, in the holy providence of God, tried with a tract 
of tribulations, each of them more trying than another, and some 
of them that, I think (as once the blest author of this treatise, on 
occasion of a sad and surprising stroke, ihe removal of the desire 
of his eyes, his gracious and faithful wife, after a whiles silence, 
with much gravity and great composure of spirit, said, ' Who 
could persuade me to believe that this is good if God had not 
said it V) if all the world had said and sworn it, they could very 
hardly, if at all, have persuaded you to believe that they were 
good. Luit since God, that can not. lie, hath said it, there is no 
room left to debate or doubt of it : let be to denv it. And if your 
ladyship (as I hope you have) hath been all this while gathering 
up the customs of spiritual good and gain upon these many, va- 
rious, and great tribulations, wherewith the Lord, no doubt in a 
blessed design of singular good to you, hath thought fit to exer- 
cise you beyond most persons living, at least of vour noble sta- 
tion and extraction, oh, what a vast stock and treasure of rich 
and soul-enriching precious experiences of the good and profit 
of all these afflictions and tribulations, must you needs have lying 
by you !" He further says : " I could, from my own particular, 
certain knowledge and observation, long ago and of late (having 
had the honor and happiness to be often in your company, and at 
some of the lowest ebbs of your outward prosperity), and from 
the knowledge of others more knowing and observing than I, say 
more of your rich incomes of gain and advantage, of your im- 
provements, of the countervailing^ of your damage, and of the 
upmakings of all your losses this way, than either my fear of 
incurring the construction of a flatterer with such as do not know 
you as I do, will permit ; or your Christian modesty, sobriety, 



MARCHIONESS OF ARGYLL. 107 

and self-denial, will admit. And to undertake to say all that 
might truly, and without complimenting, bo said to this purpose, 
would be thought by your ladyship as far below you to crave or 
expect, as it would be above me suitably to perform." 

In private intercourse, the conversation of the marchioness 
was both edifying and interesting. Her acquaintance with the 
Sacred Writings, and with the subordinate standards of the 
church of Scotland, enabled her to speak intelligently on ques- 
tions of theology, and she was able to give a pleasing account 
of events which had befallen her family, as well as of those which 
had befallen the church and nation, during the stirring period in 
which she had lived. " I must not," says Mr. Gillies, " forget 
to tell that her acquaintance with the Scriptures, and with our 
Confession of Faith (the book which, next to the Bible, she was 
most versed in), did sufficiently witness how well she was stored 
with the knowledge of Divine mysteries ; and although she was 
no great reader of polemic divinity, yet when any head of con- 
troversy fell to be spoken of in her presence, she would, upon 
the sudden, from the Bible and Confession, adduce such allega- 
tions and testimonies as were apposite to the things then spoken 
of, so that the most judicious that were about her were often arid 
much edified by her. She was also Avell able to give a good ac- 
count of things that had passed during the late troubles, and many 
remarkable passages of Providence that fell out in these times, 
toward the church and kingdom, and toward her own family, to 
the great satisfaction of those that conversed with her." It is to 
be regretted that neither she herself, nor Mr. Gillies, has chron- 
icled these " remarkable passages." 

The marchioness lived to a considerably advanced age. In 
her last illness she exhibited the same pious spirit with which 
she was animated during her past life, and her latter end was 
peace. Only a few facts, however, relating to her death-bed 
scene, and the protracted sickness preceding it, have been pre- 
served, and these we shall give in the words of Mr. Gillies, by 
whom they have been recorded. " Her disease," says he, " of 
which she died, commenced in April, 1677, and continued du- 
ring the period of eleven months, till her departure. Yet from 
April till November she kept her feet, always waiting on duties 
in public and private, as she was wont to do, bearing the burden 
of her disease so patiently that none but those that were nearest 
her and most intimate with her could almost know that anything 
ailed her. She, however, had death still in view, and her strength 
was still diminishing gradually till November, at whi<" v time 



108 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

there -was the accession of a great cold to her former disease, 
which forced her to take bed, November 1 lth. After some days 
she got up again, having recovered from the effects of that cold ; 
but her old disease still continued and increased, so that from 
that time forth she never went out of her chamber to the gallery, 
where she used to appear in public. She therefore appointed the 
daily worship to be performed in her chamber, where also was 
performed the sabbath-day's work and week-day's sermon, admit- 
ting there all that pleased to come, as she had done in the gal- 
lery, never shutting her gates or doors upon any all these times, 
whatever might be the hazard. During this time she contracted 
a great cold in the left side of her head, which was caused by the 
leaving a window open to help the chimney that does not vent 
well when the wind is at east. This cold brought that side of her 
head to such a distemper as never left her, and did not a little 
molest her, while ber main sickness did still increase, yet with- 
out impairing her judgment, memory, or sense (which were fresh 
and entire almost unto the last), and without pain or heart sick- 
ness, which was a great wonder to herself, and oft acknowledged 
as God's great mercy to her in his loosing the pins of her taber- 
nacle so gently, that she was yet able to attend and go about any 
ordinary duty ; for all this while she waited on every duty, most 
part sitting up (and but seldom lying) on her couch in the cham- 
ber, going to bed and rising almost at the ordinary times as when 
in health, continuing to join in all acts of worship, and holding 
out, in the sabbath-day's work, without wearying, to the admira- 
tion of all who saw her weakness, and to her own admiration. 

And although a heavy disease," * 

Here Mr. Gilbes's account of her last sickness and death ab- 
ruptly stops. We, however, gather a few facts respecting the 
subsequent stages of her trouble, from a long poetical tribute to 
her memory, of his composition, embodying the particulars con- 
tained in his prose account of her, the most of which we have 
extracted, and carrying the narrative down to the moment in 
which she expired. From this poem we learn, that after this she 
was afflicted with severe and tedious bodily distress, which she 
bore with a patience and meekness that beautifully harmonized 
with the bright exemplifications she had given of these graces 
under the multiplied afflictions of her life. We also learn from 
it, that after this she suffered severe mental distress. Satan has 
often been permitted to disturb the peace of the most eminent of 
God's people on their death-beds, and by setting their sins, as it 

* Wodrow MSS., vol. xxvii., 4 to., No. 27. 



MARCHIONESS OF ARGYLL. 109 

were, in array before them, ho has tempted them to yield to the 
despairing imagination, that it is presumptuous for them to expect 
forgiveness and salvation from a God of infinite purity and jus- 
tice. Such was the temptation with which this pious lady was 
assailed in the prospect of eternity. But looking away from ev- 
erything about herself, and trusting to the righteousness of Christ 
as the only foundation of her hope of eternal life, she was at last 
relieved ; and becoming victorious over temptation and fear, she 
said, " O my ease is great; great, great is my ease." After this 
she again endured severe and protracted inward bodily agony. 
These agonies, says Mr. Gillies, can hardly be " set forth'' hut. 
as they " expressed her worth, and how much her Savior had 
trusted to the grace which he had strongly planted in her noble 
heart." Bystanders were astonished to see one who had suffered 
so much during life, tried so severely by her heavenly Father to 
the last. But the days of her mourning were now near an end. 
Her strength gradually sunk, and on the 13th of March, 1678, 
after a long experience of the trials and vicissitudes of human 
life, she breathed out her spirit into the hands of her God and 
Savior, with the greatest peace and tranquillity, in the sixty- 
eighth year of her age, bearing testimony with her dyinsr breath 
to the goodness of the Lord.* The Wodrow MSS., besides Mr. 
Giliies's poem from which these particulars are drawn, contain 
another by a different hand, but it is too long to be here inserted, 
nor has it any claim to poetical merit. It commemorates her as 
distinguished by a " strong heart, a sound judgment, an active 
liberal hand," and " a mind most noble." It celebrates the attrac- 
tions of her person, as well as her " parts, virtues, graces," and 
her rare exemplary character as " a friend, sister, consort, and 
mother ;" and pronounces her " a public blessing, a universal 
good." The following lines may be quoted as a specimen : — 

" And let us neves lose the memory 
Of that rich pattern thou wast seen tn be 
To great and small, he who thy life should view 
Saw clear it did the Bible transcript shew, 
And who thy steps will follow hard behind 
The way to endless bliss is sure to find. 

" You must acknowledge here a light, 
A shining star quite carried from our sight. 
Never again t' adorn our sphere, whose rays, 
While here it shone with us, made gladsome days, 
Glad were our hearts ; how many warmed by thee, 
Esteemed thy presence a felicity. 
But thou wilt yet once more return again, 
As one of the Redeemer's glorious train."'r 

* Wodrow MSS., vol. xxvii., folio, No. 80. t Ibid. 

10 



110 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

These notices of the marchioness of Argyll's character we can 
not conclude more appropriately than in the words of Mr. Gil- 
lies, who has summed it up in a sentence or two. " Her life," 
says lie, " is well known to have been filled with godliness, righ- 
teousness, sobriety, charity, and all Christian virtues, with a con- 
stant adherence to the truths and ways of God, without any fall 
or stain upon any part of her life. Yea, which is admirable, she 
lived to the age of sixty-eight, without ever being slurred through 
her whole lile with any scandal or crime ; which the most blame- 
less saints are liable to, and have been sorely afflicted with ; yet 
did none of the worst of her enemies ever adventure to asperse 
her with any shameful thing, nor did they ever tax her with any- 
thing but her principles and avowed profession and practice, her 
constant open adherence to which was her glory." How few 
the number over whose graves such a high encomium can with 
truth be pronounced ! How few, through their whole life, from 
youth to advanced age, have so conspicuously displayed the 
Christian virtues, and kept themselves so unspotted from the 
defilements of the world, as that their greatest enemies could 
find nothing against them except in the matter of their God! 

Besides her eldest daughter. Lady Anne, and her eldest son, 
Archibald, ninth earl of Argyll, formerly noticed, the marchioness 
had issue to the marquis : 1. Lord Neil Campbell of Armaddie, 
who, on his brothers invasion, was committed prisoner to the 
castle of Edinburgh. 2. Lady Jean, who was married to Rob- 
ert Kerr, first marquis of Lothian, to whom she had ten children. 
3. Lady Mary, who was married, first at Roseneath, on the 22d 
of September, 1 657, to George, sixth earl of Caithness, by whom 
she had no issue ; and who, after his death, was married on the 
7th of April, 1678, to Sir John Campbell, first earl of Breadal- 
bane,* to whom she had one son. These are all her children 
by the marquis enumerated in Douglas's Peerage ;f but besides 
these, she had to him a daughter named Lady Isabella, who 
resided with her sister, the countess of Caithness, and who is some- 
times mentioned in the epistolary correspondence of that lady.| 

* Douglas's Peerage, vol. i , p 298. t Vol. i., p. 100. 

| Law's Memorials, note by the Editor, p. 10. 



MRS. JAMES GUTHRIE. HI 



MRS. JAMES GUTHRIE, MRS. JAMES DURHAM, AND 
MRS. JOHN CARSTA1RS. 

We shall here cluster together some notices of three excellent 
women, ministers' wives, who lived during the persecution — 
Jane Ramsay, the widow of Mr. James Guthrie, who suffered 
martyrdom in 1661 ; Margaret Mure, the widow of Mr. James 
Durham, one of the ministers of the high church, Glasgow ; and 
Janet Mure, wife of Mr. John Carstairs, also minister of the high 
church, Glasgow. Many facts or incidents of their lives have 
not indeed been spared by the mouldering hand of time ; but even 
the few which remain are not without interest, particularly when 
we consider the relation in which these ladies stood to three of 
the most eminent men who adorned the church of Scotland dur- 
ing the seventeenth century, by the lustre of their talents, the 
fervor of their piety, and their unswerving faithfulness to the cause 
of God. These women were in every respect suitable compan- 
ions for the eminent men to whom they were united. Distin- 
guished for enlightened and ardent piety, they proved main-springs 
of encouragement and strength to them in the work, of the Lord, 
by their conversation, their demeanor and counsel ; and having 
taken up the cross, instead of tempting them to unfaithfulness 
to conscience, when trials and difficulties in doing the will of 
God arose, they encouraged them to steadfastness and resolution, 
exhibiting that humility, patience, and self-sacritice, which con- 
stitute the genuine spirit of the cross. All of them suffered more 
or less in the cause of presbytery, and they thanked God that 
" unto them it was given in the behalf of Christ, not only to be- 
lieve on him, but also to suffer for his sake." 

Mrs. James Guthrte was more severely tried than the other 
two. She was the second lady, whom the prelatic persecution 
made a widow,* Mr. Guthrie having been condemned by the 
parliament, to be hanged at the cross of Edinburgh as a traitor, 
on the 1st of June, 1661, and his head thereafter to be struck off 
and affixed on the Nether Bow ; which sentence was executed 
in all its parts. The grounds on which he was condemned, 
were his owning the " Western Remonstrance," " The Causes of 
God's Wrath," &c. ; but Middleton, who had the chief hand in 
urging on the proceedings, was actuated by personal malice 
* The marchioness of Argyll was the first. 



112 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

toward Guthrie, who, in 1G50, had carried, in the commission of 
the church, a motion for his excommunication, and who, by ap- 
pointment of the commission, had publicly pronounced the sen- 
tence in his own church at Sterling. On that occasion Mrs. 
Guthrie exhibited, what was the prevalent governing principle 
of her life, that strict conscientiousness, which, laying conse- 
quences out of view, looks only to the call of duty. When on 
the morning of the sabbath, on which Mr. Guthrie was to pro- 
nounce the sentence against Middleton, a messenger from the 
king, or, according to some, from a nobleman, arrived at his house, 
just as he was about to go to church, desiring him to delay pro- 
nouncing it, she said to him, on observing him perplexed, " My 
heart, what the Lord gives you light and clearness to do, that 
do, without giving a positive answer to the messenger." The 
high Christian character of this lady is attested in the farewell 
letter which Mr. Guthrie addressed to her from his prison, on 
the day on which he was executed. This letter is interesting, 
both as a relict of a dying martyr, and as a memorial of the lowly 
piety and supreme devotion to duty, which characterized the 
person to whom it is affectionately written. It also indicates 
the sources of comfort suggested to her mind, in her trying cir- 
cumstances. It is as follows : — 

" Mr Heart : Bein<r within a few hours to lay down my life 
for the testimony of Jesus Christ, I do send these few lines as 
the last obedience of unfeigned and spotless affection which I 
bear unto you, not only as one flesh, but as a member with me 
of that blessed mystical body of the Lord ; for I trust you are, 
and that God who hath begun his good work in you, will also 
perfect it and bring it to an end, and give you life and salvation. 
Whatever may be your infirmities and weakness, yet the grace 
of God shall be sufficient for you, and his strength shall be per- 
fected in your weakness. To me you have been a very kind 
and faithful yoke-fellow, and not a hinderer but a helper in the 
work of the Lord. I do bear you this testimony as all the rec- 
ompense I can now leave you with; — In all the trials I have 
met with in the work of the ministry these twenty years past, 
which have not been few, and that from aggressors of many 
sorts, upon the right hand and upon the left, you were never a 
tempter of me to depart away from the living God, and from the 
way of my duty to comply with an evil course, or to hearken to 
the counsels of flesh and blood, for avoiding the cross, and for 
gaining the profit and preferment of a present world. You have 



MRS. JAMES GUTHRIE. 113 

wrought much with your hands for furnishing bread to me and 
to my children, and was always willing that 1 should show hos- 
pitality, especially to those that bore the image of God. These 
things I mention not to pull' you up, hut to encourage you under 
your present affliction and distress, being persuaded that God 
will have regard unto you and unto the children of my body, 
which I leave unto your care, that they may be bred up in the 
knowledge of the Lord. Let not your wants and weaknesses 
discourage you : there is power, riches, and abundance with God, 
both as to the things of the body and things of the soul ; and he 
will supply all your wants and carry you through. It is like to 
be a most trying time, but cleave you to God and keep his way, 
without casting away your confidence ; fear not to be drowned 
in the depths of the troubles that may attend this land ; God will 
hide you under his shadow, and keep you in the hollow of his 
hand. Be sober and of a meek spirit ; strive not with Providence, 
but be subject to him who is the Father of spirits. Decline not 
the cross, but embrace it as your own. Love all that love the 
Lord, and delight in their fellowship. Give yourself unto prayer, 
and be diligent in reading the Holy Scriptures. Wait on the 
ordinances, and have them in great esteem as the appointed 
means of God for your salvation. Join the exercise of piety and 
repentance together, and manifest your faith in the fruits of sin- 
cere obedience, and of a gospel conversation. Value your con- 
science ahpve your skin. Be not solicitous, although you know 
not wherewith to clothe you and your children, or wherewith to 
dine ; God's providences and promises are a true, rich, and nev- 
er-failing portion. Jesus Christ be all your salvation and all 
your desire ! You, I recommend unto him, and him unto you. 
My Heart ! I recommend you to the eternal love of Jesus Christ. 
I am helped of God, and hope I shall be helped to the end. 
Pray for me while I am here, and praise with me hereafter. 
God be with you ! I am yours, " James Guthrie. 

" Edinburgh Tolbooth, June 1, 1661." 

This letter was calculated to arm Mrs. Guthrie's mind with 
fortitude and submission under the cruel and ignominious death 
of her husband. Other considerations would conspire in bring- 
ing into exercise the same Christian graces. Though con- 
demned as a traitor, he had committed nothing worthy of 
death, but fell a martyr for keeping the commandment of God 
and the testimony of Jesus Christ. He encountered death with 
an unshrinking courage, which ranks with that of the most 
10* 



114 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

heroic of prophets and apostles. It was an alleviating circum- 
stance, too, to reflect that his self-devotion in the cause of Christ 
procured for him, as it deserved, the affection, honor, and admi- 
ration of the wise and good, who regarded his death as a judicial 
murder. Nor were the religious ladies of that time wanting in 
paying to him the tribute of their respectful and admiring hom- 
age.* Though these considerations were fitted to mitigate her 
sorrow, yet the tragedy of his death, in all its appalling "circum- 
stances, would tend at first to overpower the mind, and to exclude 
from it reflection on such alleviating topics. 

Mrs. Guthrie and her children were left in poor circumstances. 
But God, who in his providence exercises a special care over 
the fatherless children and widows of his martyred servants, 
raised up for them kind friends. # Among others, Sir George 
Maxwell, of Pollock, took a particular interest in their temporal 
welfare. The following anecdote is highly honorable to the 
liberality of that benevolent gentleman, and "interesting as illus- 
trating the unexpected and remarkable way in which God has 
sometimes supplied the wants of the widows and orphans of his 
departed saints in their distress. " I am assured," says Wodrow, 
" by a good hand that had it from Mr. George Lang, who was 
employed, that Sir George Maxwell of Pollocli, a little after Mr. 
Guthrie's execution, hearing his relict was in want, called for 
Mr. George Lang, his chaplain, and told him that he was mighty 

* In proof of this, the fallowing instance may be given. Afrer Giuh'rie bad been 
executed, Ins headless corpse was put into a coffin and carried to the old kirk aisle, 
to be prepared for interment, by several devout la >ies of quality who had tei 
their tneudly services. The dressing of the dead is always solemn, bin the per- 
formance ot this duly to the mortal remains of an bo ored martyr who has sealed 
the truths of God with his blood, is associated witli feelings of pro'oand veuernt on. 
It was so on the present occasion— some of the ladies who were so engaged, dippi d 
then- napkins in the blood that flowed from Gu hrie's mangled bodv. Sir Archibald 
Primrose, lord register, observing what they did, asked them their reason for so 
doing, and charged ihem wiih iinitatin? the superstition of the papists, who collect 
and worship the relicts of saints. •' No,'' said one of them, » we are not actuated 
by superfluous motives; we do not intend to worship the martyr's blood, but when 
v\e go to the throne of grace we will hold up that blood to God, that it may cry for 
vengeance on those who have most cruelly shed it." During the performance of 
their solemn offices, a respectable yonng gentleman, unknown at the time to any of 
them, but aire, ward discovered to be Mr. Ge >rge Stirling, who became an eminent 
sorg o.i in Edinburgh, came in with a vi d of fragrant ointment, and. wilhout ntter- 
in- a word, poured upon the corpse the ointment, which diffused tbrooeh tbe whole 
building a most delightful odor. " God bless you. sir." pxclaimed one of the ladies, 
"lor tins labor of love which vouhave shown to the slain bodv of a servant of Jesus 
Christ." Bowing respectfully to the ladies, he silently retired. "Janet Bruce," 
Bays W odrew. " who was Dr Sir Th .mas Burner's lady, if I have nor forgotten, 
was one ol these gentlewomen that put their napkins in Mr. Guthrie's blond."— 
\\ or row s Analecta, vol. iii., p. 103. M'Crie's Sketches of Scottish Church History. 
2d edition, p. 306. f 



MRS. JAMES GUTHRIE. 115 

uneasy since he had heard Mrs. Guthrie was in straits, and he 
had little money by him, but took out a purse oi' gold, most of it 
old Scots coins, of which he was very curious, and told him he 
would rather have sent, if he had had it by him, twice the value 
of it in ordinary money, but he could not and would not delay, 
and gave it him, and sent him in to Edinburgh express with it 
and a letter to Mrs. Guthrie. It was to the value of five hundred 
or six hundred marks.* Mr. Lang went in by Glasgow and 
borrowed five or six hundred merks, and left the gold in pledge, 
carried in and delivered the money to Mrs. Guthrie."! 

In the beginning of the year 16G6, Mrs. Guthrie was put to 
trouble on account of a book entitled " An Apologetical Relation 
of the Particular Sufferings of the Faithful Ministers and Profes- 
sors of the Church of Scotland since August, 1660," which was 
written by Mr. John Brown, minister of Wamphray at the Resto- 
ration, and who, on being banished his majesty's dominions for 
faithfully adhering to his principles, took refuge in Holland. 
This able work was printed in Holland, in 1665, and a number 
of copies were sent over to this country. The government, being 
informed of the character of the book, and of its being circulated 
in various parts of the kingdom, and having, upon perusing it 
themselves, found it, to use their own language, " to be full of 
seditious, treasonable, and rebellious principles, contrived of 
purpose, to traduce the king's authority and government, the pro- 
ceedings of the late parliament, and the king's privy council," 
they resolved to put it down. As it vindicates at length the 
marquis of Argyll and Mr. James Guthrie, the first victims who, 
after the Restoration, were immolated at the shrine of the Moloch 
of personal revenge and arbitrary power; and exposes the illegal- 
ity, injustice and cruelty of the proceedings of the government 
against them, it was natural that Mrs. Guthrie should procure a 
copy of the book. The copy she had got being found in her 
house, probably when it was searched for some of the covenant- 
ers—such persons, from her relation to Mr. Guthrie, and from 
her known character, being suspected of resorting to or taking 
shelter under her roof — she and her daughter, Sophia Guthrie, 
were brought before the privy council on the 8th of February, 
1666. On appearing before them they were required to declare 
upon oath, what they knew as to the author of the book, and to 
discover from whom they had received it. This they refused to 

* 'I hat is, between £28, n..<i £3«aterl has. 

t Wodrow's Annlecta. vol. i , p 30o Mr. Lang liful no authority to pledge the 
gold coins, but knowing the value which Sir George Maxwell set upon them, he 
did so that they might be recovered when Sir George got a supply of money. 



116 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

do, upon which the council sentenced them both to be sent to 
Shetland, there to be confined during the council's pleasure, and 
to be kept close prisoners till they should be transported to the 
place of their banishment. These proceedings were not only 
hai\-h, but illegal. No law had as yet been published against the 
'• Apologetical Relation. " It was only on the day on which this 
sentence was passed upon Mrs. Guthrie and her daughter that 
the council emitted their proclamation against it, ordaining that, 
upon the 14th of February instant, it should be publicly burned 
on the High street of Edinburgh, near to the market cross, by 
the hand of the hangman, and that all possessing it resident on 
the south of the Tay, should deliver the same to the sheriffs of 
the respective shires or their deputies, to be by them transmitted 
to the clerk of the privy council not later than the last day of 
February instant, and those on the north of the Tay not later than 
the 21st of March next, under the penalty of two thousand pounds 
Scots money. It is obvious, then, that as at the time when the 
" Apologetical Relation was discovered in Mrs. Guthrie's house, 
there was no law in existence forbidding any to have it, its being 
found in her possession was no crime against any existing stat- 
ute, and that consequently the sentence pronounced against her 
and her daughter was arbitrary and illegal. " Where no law is, 
there is no transgression." 

They lay in prison till the next meeting of the council, which 
was on the 2d of March. To that meeting they presented a 
petition praying that their confinement might be altered to some 
place upon the Continent, probably intending, should they be 
allowed, to remove to Holland, which, from the number of their 
expatriated countrymen resident there, as well as from the char- 
acter of the country itself, though it is not one of the best of 
climates, they would have felt a more eligible place of banishment 
than so remote, solitary, cold, and unhealthy a part of the world as 
Shetland. The council referred their petition to his majesty's 
commissioner, with power to do in the matter as he should find 
cause.* 

What punishment the commissioner inflicted upon them we 
are not directly informed. Mrs. Guthrie, however, was banished 
for some years from Edinburgh. This appears from a petition 
which she presented to the privy council about the beginning of 
January, 1669, "showing that her only son was in Edinburgh 
under a sad distemper, to the hazard of his life, and therefore 
supplicating that, notwithstanding her confinement, she might be 
* YVodiow's History, vol. ii , p. 7. 



MRS. JAMES GUTHRIE. 117 

licensed for some time to come to Edinburgh and wait upon her 
son." The council, at their meeting of the 15th of January, 
"upon consideration of this petition, and of a testimonial sub- 
scribed by Dr. Burnet, which was at the same time presented, 
allow the petitioner to come to Edinburgh, and to reside therein 
until the fifteenth day of February next, to the effect above men- 
tioned."* 

Here we lose sight of Mrs. Guthrie in the history of the per- 
secution ; nor have we discovered how long she. lived subse- 
quently to this period. We shall therefore close this sketch with 
a brief notice of her only son referred to above, whose name was 
William. 

At the time of his father's death he was a child not more than 
four or five years old. Yearning over him with all the affection 
of a parent's heart, Guthrie, in a last interview, took him upon 
his knee, and gave him such religious advices as were suited to 
his infant mind. " Willie," said he, among other things, " though 
your comrades should tell you, and cast it up to you, that your 
father was hanged, think not shame of it, for it is upon a good 
cause." But William was so young as not to be aware of the 
tragic fate of his father, and as scarcely to be restrained from 
playing in the streets on the very day of his father's execution. 
When, however, he grew up to boyhood, he became thoughtful 
and serious. While other boys were enjoying their youthful 
sports, William was to be seen at the Nether Bow Port, where 
the head of his dear father was fixed on a spike, a monument of 
the martyr's heroism and of the government's injustice ; and there 
looking up with riveted gaze to the manly countenance, the trage- 
dy of his father's execution was presented to his imagination as 
if in all its living reality. Often would he return to the spot and 
gaze upon the spectacle, as if he could never become weary of 
gazing upon it ; and, on returning home to his mother, when she 
inquired where he had been, his usual reply was, " I have been 
seeing my father's head." He remembered or was told his fa- 
ther's last advices to him ; he read his father's last speech from 
the scaffold, a copy of which the martyr subscribed and sealed, 
and gave to his lriends, to be kept for his son until he became 
older ; and the mantle of his father seemed to have fallen upon 
him. As he grew up, his habits of seriousness increased — he 
was much employed in meditation, study, and prayer. f Having 

* Register of Acts of Privy Council. 

t Wodrow's Analecta, vol. iii., p. 103. Life of Guthrie, in Free Church Publica- 
tions, pp. 172-175. 



118 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

devoted himself to the work of the ministry, he prosecuted the 
preparatory studies with success, and gave indications of much 
future usefulness ; but, being always of a delicate constitution, he 
was cut off when about to receive license us a preacher of the 
gospel. By his early death his mother's hopes of seeing him 
useful in the church below were disappointed. It was not, how- 
ever, the will of God that he should be employed in his service 
on earth, and she doubtless bowed with submission to the sover- 
eign and wise determination of the Supreme Ruler of all things, 
finding in this a new influence to attract her to heaven, and a new 
motive to quicken her diligence in making preparation for it. 

Mrs. James Durham, whose maiden name was Margaret 
Mure, was the fourth daughter of William Mure, Esq., of Glan- 
ders ton, by his first wife Jean Blair, daughter of a gentleman of 
that name in the west.* She was born August 26, 1618. En- 
joying the inestimable blessing of religious parents, who both 
set before her a good example, and trained her up in the nurture 
and admonition of the Lord, she became at an early period of 
life the subject of the saving work of the Holy Spirit. Educated 
too in the strictest principles of presbytery, of which her father 
was a warm supporter, she continued through life to maintain 
them, in honor and dishonor, through evil report and good report. 
She was married first to the famous Mr. Zachary Boyd, minister 
of the Barony church of Glasgow, and next to the still more cele- 
brated Mr. James Durham, as his second wife. But she became 
a widow a second time in 1658, Durham having died on the 25th 
of June that year, in the thirty-sixth year of his age. She sur- 
vived him more than thirty years, living during that long period 
in a state of widowhood. Some time after his death, she appears 
to have changed the place of her residence to Edinburgh. At 

* Besides Mrs. Durlinm and a dansbter, Jean, who died in infancy, Mr Mure of 
Glanderston hail, by his first wife, other two daughters — Ursula, who was married 
to W illiam Ralston of that ilk, and Jean, who was married to Mr. James Hamilton 
of EUBcraigs, a nephew of Lord Clanebny: and by his second wife, Jean Hamilton, 
sistc to L' rd Viscount Claneboy, he had Janet, to he next noticed, who was mar- 
ried to Mr John Ca'staiis; Elizabeth, vih:i was married to Alexander Dunlop, min- 
ister of Paisley ; and Aenes, who was married to William Porteifield of Quarrel ton. 
All these ladies were eminent for piety in their day. For some notices of Mrs. 
Ralston, see Wodrow's Annlecta, vol. iii., pp. 18, 20; and Mr John Carstairs' Let- 
ters, pp. 159-161. In Rutherford's Letters. White and Kennedy's edition, published 
184.", there is a letter of Huth-rford's to this lady, printed for the first time (p. 716). 
Elizabeth, the wife of Mr. Dunlop. for being present at a house conventicle in Ed 
inhurgh, in November, 1676, was imprisoned by order of the privy council, till she 
found caution, under a thousand meiks, to remove from the town of Edinburgh, and 
6tx miles around it. — Wodrow's History, vol. ii-, p. 335. 



MRS. JAMES DURHAM. 119 

least she was residing there in 166G,* and subsequently during 
the period of the persecution. 

After Mr. Durham's death, she carefully preserved his manu- 
script lectures and sermons, with a view to their being published 
for general usefulness, and many of them were actually published. 
Amono' these may be mentioned his " Exposition of the Son»- of 
Solomon," to which she has prefixed an epistle dedicatory, signed 
and apparently written by herself, to the viscountess of Kenmure ; 
and his " Treatise on the Ten Commandments." This latter 
work, from its very nature, would be regarded with jealousy by 
a persecuting government, whose whole policy was in direct op- 
position to the law of God, and some difficulty was experienced 
when it was first printed, in obtaining permission to its being 
circulated in Scotland, there being then no such thing as the 
freedom of the press in our land. Having cot it printed in Lon- 
don, Mrs. Durham presented a petition to the lords of the privy 
council, praying them to allow it to be imported from England 
and sold in Scotland. The council's answer to her pelition is 
embodied in the following act : " Edinburgh, 4th of November, 
1675. The lords of his majesty's privy council having consid- 
ered a petition presented by Margaret Mure, relict of Mr. James 
Durham, late minister at Glasgow, do recommend to the bishop 
of Edinburgh to revise a book written by the petitioner's hus- 
band, entitled ' A Practical Exposition of the Ten Command- 
ments,' which is already printed at London, and to report his 
opinion thereanent to the council, that thereafter they may give 
such order in favor of the petitioner concerning the said book as 
they shall think fit, and in the meantime discharge and prohibit 
all printers, stationers, and others, to reprint or import any copies 
of the said book, under the pain of confiscation of the same, and 
such other penalties as the council shall think fit to inflict, and 
appoint intimation to be made hereof to the stationers, printers, 
and others, to the effect foresaid."! 

As might have been expected, Mrs. Durham adhered to the 
faithful ministers who, for nonconformity, had been ejected from 
their charges to make way for the establishment of prelacy ; and, 
maintaining the freedom of Christ's embassadors to dispense the 
ordinances of the gospel, not only without liceuses from the civil 
magistrate, but even when the civil magistrate has peremptorily 

* Mr. William Witch, in his Memoirs (p. 38), states that when sei t on a perilous 
mission to Kdiaburdi by the covenanters previous to the battle of Penrland Hills, 
he Lrteuded to retire all nkht in the house of Mrs. Durham, which was in Bristo 
street 

t Register of Acts of Privy Council. 



120 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

discharged them to preach, baptize, or perform any of the duties 
of the ministerial office, she had too much principle and spirit 
not to act upon these sentiments. She was accordingly not only 
a frequenter of conventicles, but an encourager of these inter- 
dicted meetings, so far as to allow them to be held in her own 
house. For a considerable time this was not known to the au- 
thorities of Edinburgh, or it was overlooked by the town-major, 
who was in the habit of accepting money as a bribe, not to inter- 
fere with the private worshipping assemblies of the nonconform- 
ists in the city. When, however, the news of the tragical death 
of Archbishop Sharp, which took place May 3, 1679, had reached 
Edinburgh, the government becoming greatly alarmed and irri- 
tated, such as kept conventicles in their own houses, or frequented 
them, were exposed in an increased degree to danger and hard- 
ship. On the 4th of May, the day after the archbishop's death, 
a meeting for sermon was held at night in Mrs. Durham's house. 
The number present was about thirty, and the most of them were 
her near relations, their children and servants. The preacher 
was Mr. William Hamilton, a young gentleman of eminent piety, 
and the brother of Mr. James" Hamilton, of Hallcraig, who was 
married to Mrs. Durham's full sister Jean. When engaged in 
religious services, this peaceful meeting was furiously broke in 
upon by the town-major with a party of soldiers, who, seizing all 
present, committed them to prison. Mrs. Durham and her sis- 
ter, Mrs. John Carstairs, who was one of the hearers, were, with 
the rest, imprisoned in the tolbooth for some nine or ten days, 
when on their petitioning the privy council, an order was granted 
for their being set at liberty. The act of the council is as fol- 
lows : " Edinburgh, 13th of May, 1679. The lords of his maj- 
esty's privy council, having considered a petition of Margaret 
Mure, relict, of Mr. James Durham, and Janet Mure, spouse to 
Mr. John Carstairs, for themselves and their children and ser- 
vants, and divers other persons, prisoners in the tolbooth of 
Edinburgh, for being present at a conventicle kept in the house 
of the said Margaret Mure, upon the 4th instant, supplicating, 
that in regard of their miserable and poor condition, the council 
would give order for their liberty, the said lords do declare the 
petitioners free of any restraint or imprisonment by their warrant, 
and remit to the magistrates of Edinburgh to take such course 
with them as they shall think fit."* Wodrow observes that it 
was with difficulty that some of their friends got the council to 
pass this act in their favor. f 
* Decreets of Privy Council. f Wodrow's History, vol. iii., p. 10. 



MRS. JAMES DURHAM. 121 

For this conventicle the magistrates of Edinburgh were fined 
by the privy council in the sum of fifty pounds sterling, accord- 
ing to the fifth act of the second session of the second parliament 
of Charles II., by which act it is expressly provided and declared 
that " magistrates of burghs are liable, for every conventicle kept 
in their burghs, to such fines as the lords of privy council shall 
think fit to impose."* 

But the preacher, Mr. Hamilton, was most severely dealt with. 
His close imprisonment and harsh treatment so affected his health, 
that after some weeks he became dangerously ill of cholera, and 
though his friends presented a petition to the privy council, pray- 
ing that he might be allowed to go to the country for the recovery 
of his health, and offered to give bond under whatever penalty 
they chose for his compearing, if his life should be spared, yet 
this petition, notwithstanding its being accompanied with the at- 
testations of two physicians as to his extreme danger, was not 
only rejected, but the council assured his friends that they in- 
tended to prosecute him for house conventicles at their next meet- 
ing. Before, however, the day of that meeting arrived, this ex- 
cellent young man died in prison ; and thus he may be said to 
have fallen a martyr to the free preaching of the gospel ; for the 
only charge they could bring against him was his delivering a 
sermon to a few friends in the house of a relative, without being 
licensed or authorized by a bishop ; and his death being caused 
by the inhuman manner in which he was treated, the guilt of it 
may be as justly laid upon the government as if they had sen- 
tenced him to be hanged at the Grassmarket.f 

The following anecdotes concerning Mrs. Durham, may not 
be deemed unworthy of a place in this brief sketch, as they serve 
to illustrate both her character and principles. She was in the 
habit, it would appear, of visiting such of her friends and others 
as were imprisoned for their steadfast adherence to presbytery. 
Nor were her visits always confined to those of whose sentiments 
on religious and ecclesiastical questions she could altogether ap- 
prove. On one occasion she went to prison to see some females 
who belonged to the fanatical sect called " The Sweet-Singers," 
not because she approved of their opinions and practices, but be- 
cause she felt for them as deluded persons, who had been driven 
to frenzy by the violence of persecution. In this instance, how- 
ever, she was far from meeting with a cordial reception. Law, 
when recording the imprisonment of five men and ten women of 
this sect, who were taken about Cather Moor of Borrowstounness, 

* Decreets of Privy Council, May 15, 1679. t Wodrow's Hist., voL iii, p. 54. 
11 



322 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

says : " These people were so deluded of Satan, as that they did 
not work, contrary to that, 1 Thes. iv. 11 ; nor would they eat 
any meat given them by the council, nor drink anything that paid 
excise ; and when honest women, ministers' wives, came to see 
them, they began to rail upon them and upbraid them with the 
name of Jezebel, and called them reprobates. Mr. Durham's 
wife, and Mr. William Guthrie's wife, were so upbraided.'"* On 
visiting Mr. Robert Baillie of Jerviswood, in prison, she met with 
a very different character, and was both refreshed and instructed 
by his heavenly spirit and Christian conversation. " When Mrs. 
Durham came to him that morning before he got his sentence, 
he said he was never better, and within a very little time he 
would be well beyond conception. He said they are going to 
send me in pieces and quarters through all the country ; but let 
them hagg and hew all my body in as many pieces as they please, 
I am not much concerned about that ; for I know assuredly there 
shall be nothing of me lost, but all these members shall be won- 
derfully gathered, and shall all be made like his glorious body, 
the body of his glory."f 

Mrs. Durham was accustomed to attend not only house-con- 
venticles, but also field-meetings, which, as the persecution ad- 
vanced, became necessary, from the vast multitudes who assem- 
bled to hear the gospel. The acts of parliament, and manifold 
proclamations of the privy council, by which these meetings were 
prohibited, did not frighten her from being present at them ; nor 
did the opprobrious names of " unlawful conventicles," "semina- 
ries of separation," and " rendezvouses of rebellion," applied to 
them by the government, convince her that it was criminal to 
assemble in the open air to hear the glad tidings of salvation, 
when she remembered that her Savior, in the fields and on the 
mountain's brow, taught the multitudes who crowded around him 
to receive the lessons of wisdom from his lips. The following 
anecdote, relating to her opinion of some of the field-preachers, 
has been preserved by Wodrow : " Mr. Patrick Simson," says 
he, " told me that Mrs. Durham, when reading some sermons of 
the high-fliers, and when hearing some of the more violent of the 
field-preachers, said that she observed just such a difference be- 
tween the field-preachings and those she was used to, as she did 
between the Apocrypha and the Bible when she read them."| 
Mrs. Durham seemed to refer to such of the field-preachers as, 
more zealous than wise, broke forth in their sermons into bitter 



* Law's Memorials, pp. 185, 186. 
t Wodrow's Aaalecta, vol. iii., p. 79. 



t Ibid., vol. i , p. 324. 



MRS. JAMES DURHAM. 123 

invectives and uncharitable censures against the indulged minis- 
ters. She also, apparently, had an eye to the indigested and su- 
perficial theology of their discourses. The former was provoked, 
though it could not be vindicated, from the pretext which the ac- 
ceptance of the indulgence, by their more compromising breth- 
ren, gave to the government to persecute the non-indulged with 
aggravated severity. The latter is best apologized for from the 
little leisure they had for reading and study, in consequence of 
their being constantly driven about from place to place. It is 
not, however, alleged that she pronounced an unfavorable judg- 
ment on all the field-preachers — a sweeping sentence, which 
could not have been supported by facts — the most of them being 
far from inclining to extremes, while many of them, as Welsh, 
Blackadder, Riddell, and others, preached the gospel with much 
acceptance, as well as with remarkable success, including among 
their hearers and converts not a few of the best educated in the 
country. 

Another anecdote, recorded by the same industrious collector, 
concerning this lady and two ministers, illustrates how galling 
and oppressive was the yoke of arbitrary and prelatic domina- 
tion to the presbyterians, and how ardently they longed for deliv- 
erance. Writing, in 1731, Wodrow says : "In the year 1685 
or 1686, Mr. Samuel Arnot died at Edinburgh, after all the 
persecutions and sufferings he had gone through since Pentland, 
in much peace and joy. There was, generally, much company 
that came and saw him on his death-bed. Among others, Mr. 
James Rowat, minister at Kilmarnock before the Restoration, 
came to see him, and, among other things, he asked Mr. Arnot 
if he had any hopes the church of Scotland would get out from 
under this dark cloud she had been under for twenty-five years 
or thereby. The other answered he had, and he was assured 
she would. ' Yea,' added he, ' I know more, and that is, that 
you shall live to see and partake of the church's delivery.' And 
so it came to pass. Mr. Rowat lived till 1690, or a year or two 
later, it may be, and saw that great work of God at the revolu- 
tion. Among others present when this was spoken, that good 
woman, Mrs. Durham, relict of Mr. Zachary Boyd and Mr. James 
Durham, was there, and she got up and said to Mr. Rowat, ' Mr. 
James, I am younger than you, I hope I shall see the day of de- 
livery as well as you,' and she danced and skipped for joy ; and 
so it came about. I was at her burial, at Glasgow, about the 
year 1692 or 1693."* 

* Wodrow's Analecta, vol. iv., p. 285. 



124 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

Mrs. John Carstairs, sister of the preceding, was the eldest 
daughter of William .Mure, Esq., of Glanderston, by his second 
wife, Jean Hamilton, a daughter of Hans Hamilton, vicar of Dun- 
lop, and sister to Lord Viscount Claneboy. She was born Feb- 
ruary 25, 1625. Enjoying, like Mrs. Durham, the blessing of 
pious parents, she early devoted herself to God; and, like her, 
she also inherited from them a zealous attachment to presbyterian 
principles. She was married to Mr. John Carstairs in 1647 or 
1648, when he had been just settled, or when he was about to be 
setiled minister of Cathcart, where, however, he did not long re- 
main, having been translated to the high church of Glasgow, ia 
1650. To her eminent Christian character Mr. Carstairs fre- 
quently bears testimony, many years after they were united in 
marriage. In a letter to her, dated November 25, 1662, he thus 
writes : " I desire to bless Him that ever he was pleased to cast 
our lot to be together, and that he found you out a help meet for 
me : you were never a temptation to me, nor an obstruction to 
me either in my ministerial or Christian course, though you have 
been little furthered and much obstructed by me ; but he can 
make up out of the riches of his grace to you what you have been 
now these fifteen years at a loss in by me."* And in another 
letter to her, dated August 12, 1664, he pronounces upon her a 
still higher encomium : " I desire to bless the Lord for you ; you 
have been to me indeed a meet and faithful help, and if I had more 
improved your fellowship and counsel, your discreet and wise 
counsel, I am not ashamed to say it to you, I might have thriven 
better as a man, as a Christian, and as a minister. He might 
very justly, for my sins, deprive me of such a wife, such a moth- 
er, such a friend, such a counsellor, yea, of all relations, sweetly 
centred in such a one."f 

In the correspondence between Mrs. Carstairs and her hus- 
band, after the persecution had commenced, we have a fine illus- 
tration of resolute adherence to duty amid great temptations and 
dangers. Several of the letters which passed between them have 
come down to our day, and while from these it is manifest that 
Mr. Carstairs was a man of fortitude and magnanimity in the 
cause of Christ, it is equally apparent from them that Mrs. Car- 
stairs was not inferior to her husband in these virtues. 

When he began to be molested for his presbyterian principles, 

Mr. Carstairs applied himself to the task of fortifying her mind 

for those hardships and sufferings which, without a direlection of 

duty, they could not escape. On receiving a summons, on the 

* Letters of Mr. John Carstairs, &c, pp. 91, 92. t Ibid., p. 133. 



MRS. JOHN CARSTAIRS. 125 

15th of November, 1662, to appear before the privy council, wri- 
ting to her from Hallcraig, on the very day on which lie received 
it, he thus speaks : " I hope, my dear, you can bear, through the 
grace that hath often strengthened you in difficulties that have 
occurred about me since we came together, to hour without vex- 
ation of mind, that I have this day got a charge to compear before 
the council this same clay fourteen days, a double whereof I have 
sent you. It may be He will pity me and help me. The cause 
is good, and nothing at all disgraceful. Oh, to have a suitable 
frame everyway! pray for it, and for sinless and inoffensive 
through-bearing. . . . Now, my heart, let me beseech you to 
take courage in the Lord, who hath given you a room in his heart, 
and will in due time give you a room among them that stand by 
the throne. Resolve to endure hardness as a good soldier of 
Jesus Christ. We may see this storm blow over, if kept faith- 
ful, and meet with higher and holier things."* 

In like manner, when on his being summoned to appear in 
April, 1664, before the high commission-court, for having been a 
witness to the dying testimony in favor of presbytery, which his 
brother-in-law, Mr. James Wood, professor of divinity in the col- 
lege of St. Andrews, left behind him, he fled, to escape the fury 
of Archbishop Sharp, which he had thus provoked, and hid him- 
self for some time in Ireland and the west of Scotland, he thus 
encourages her, in a letter written from the place of his retreat, 
dated May 27, 1664 : " If at this next meeting [of the privy 
council]! some men shall be cruel, and others shall disappoint 
us and prove vanity and a lie, think it not strange, neither let it 
trouble you. It's like we will have trouble in the world ; but if 
w r e shall have peace in Him that hath overcome the world, we 
have reason to be of good cheer. Let us quietly and patiently 
wait for our sentence in these courts from God, which though as 
from men it should be unjust and cruel, yet as from God it will 
be just, holy, and I hope, good."| 

The high Christian sentiments expressed in these extracts 
were not now for the first time presented to the attention of Mrs. 
Carstairs. They had long been familiar to her mind, and amid 
the trials of the past she had practically exemplified them. " It 
does not a little satisfy and refresh me," says Mr. Carstairs in a 
letter to her, July 3, 1664, "that the Lord is graciously pleased 
to keep your own mind calm and quiet ; and indeed it hath been 

* Letters of Mr. John Carstairs, &c, pp 91, 92. 

t Mr. Carstairs, about the end of April, or the beginning of May, had also been 
summoned to appear before the privy council. — Wodrow's History, vol. i., p. 412. 
t Letters of Mr. John Carstairs, &c, p. 120. 
11* 



126 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

his manner, to the commendation of his grace be it spoken, to 
bless you with somewhat of that mercy in most of the difficulties 
you have been in Providence trysted with since our being to- 
gether — a mercy, indeed, and highly valuable, without which the 
least of difficulties will easily embitter a very well accommoda- 
ted lot ; nay, even the very apprehension of a difficulty."! But 
having counted the cost of self-sacrifice, as well as estimated the 
rich reward of present peace and future glory, in becoming an 
humble follower of Christ, she was prepared for the endurance 
of severer trials than had hitherto been measured out to her ; and 
when they befell her she encountered them with a high and holy 
heroism. On this subject let us hear her speak for herself. In 
a letter she addressed to Mr. Carstairs, without date, but evident- 
ly written when he was forced to flee for his connection- with 
Mr. Wood's dying testimony for presbytery, we have a fine illus- 
tration of the strength and fearlessness of mind which true reli- 
gion and a good cause are so well fitted to impart. She would 
not have him unnecessarily to expose himself to danger, but 
trusts that should he fall into the hands of his persecutors, grace 
would be given him to witness a good confession. She encour- 
ages him to bear with magnanimity the inconveniences of his 
wanderings from place to place — to quit himself like a man and 
be strong ; and she thanks God for having united to her a hus- 
band whom he counted worthy to suffer for his name's sake. 
The following is the letter in which these noble sentiments are 
expressed : — 

" My Dearest and Most Kind Friend : It was refreshing to 
me to have a line from you, but it troubled me to find you so 
heavy. He doeth well who hath found it meet to put us in heavi- 
ness for a season, finding that there was need of it. It did 
Avound me when I read that in yours — your not being adverse to 
come here, which is thought by your friends very unmeet and 
unreasonable ; for though you be very clear as to the cause, yet 
to cast yourself in such eminent hazard is a wrong, and I am 
persuaded you are not called to it, nay, you are called to the 
contrary ; so hide as well as you can, and if it please the Lord 
so to order you be found out, which I wish may not be, I hope 
he shall glorify himself in you and carry you honorably through. 
Put not yourself to it while [until] the Lord bring you to it. I 
hope my request, which is so reasonable, shall prevail with you. 
My dear, w r eary not in wandering ; it hath been the lot of many 

* Letters of Mr. John Carstairs, &c, p. 120. 



MRS. JOHN CARSTAIRS. 127 

of his worthies to wander in caves and dens of the earth; and 
although your accommodation should be very bad, so that you 
can not go about duties as you would, he counts your wandering 
better service to him than your preaching. My dear, a little 
while will put an end to all our troubles ; as for myself, I had 
reason always to bless the Lord that ever I knew yon, and this 
day I desire to bless him more than ever, that ever I was so 
nearly related to you, and that I have a husband wandering and 
suffering for the truth. Let us both bless him together for this, 
lie might have given me one that was persecuting the truth. 
The Lord strengthen and confirm you ! That commodity you 
desired can not be gotten for the present, though they be most 
willing to give it. I hope the Lord shall provide another way ; 
the bearer will show you all other things. The Lord's blessing 
and protection be with you! and may he be near your soul with 
the consolation of his Spirit ! — Farewell, my dear, I am your 
own, "J. C."* 

As a further illustration of the heroic spirit which animated 
this lady, we may give another of her letters to Mr. Carstairs, 
which is without date, but which, as may be inferred from the 
allusion in the commencement, was written in the autumn of the 
year 1667, after he had been denounced a rebel, and outlawed. 
It is as follows : — 

" My Dearest Friend : The bearer will show you how all 
matters here go. The west country gentlemen and ministers, 
who were declared rebels, are now forfaulted.f I bless the 
Lord it nothing troubles me. A smile from God, and the lifting 
up the light of his countenance, can make up, and even doth 

* Letters of Mr. John Carstairs, &c , p., 157. 

t The reference h^re is to a few country gentlemen in Renfrewshire, who had 
raised a small body of horse, to the number of about fifty, with the design of joining 
the covenanters under Colonel Wallace, previous to Iheir defeat at Pentland hills; 
lmt who, on learning that Dalziel was between them and their friends, dispersed. 
Among these gentlemen were two of Mrs Cars'airs' sisters' husbands, the laird of 
Ralston, and Porterfield of Quarrelton. The ministers in this company, besides 
Mr. Carstairs, were Mr. Gabriel Maxwell, minister at Dnudonald. and Mr. George 
Rmnsay, minister at Kilmaurs. The greater number of these gentlemen, as well 
as many other individuals, and all these ministers, except Mr. Ramsay, together 
with several other ministers, were, by proclamation, declared rebels, on the 4th of 
December, 1666. On their being afterward pursued by Sir John Nisbit, his 
majesty's advocate before the justiciary court, for treason, that court, on the 15th 
of Aus/usr. 1667, upon their not compearing, decerned them " to be denounced rebels, 
and their lands to fall to his majesty's use, as outlaws and fugitives from his majesty's 
laws ;" and some of the gentlemen, though none of the ministers, were, on the 16th 
of that month, forfeited in their absence, in lite and fortune. — Wodrow's History, 
vol. ii., pp. 28, 36, 66, 67, 73-75. 



]29 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

make up. all the injuries man can do, so that ' the lines are fallen 
to me in a most pleasant place, and I have a goodly heritage.' I 
think my lot very far above the lot of my adversaries ! Blessed 
be God who made the difference ; there being no cause, but even 
so because it pleased him. My dear, let us willingly cleave to 
him, and -suffer for him. We owe him much. How much are 
we in his debt, who hath added this mercy to all the former 
mercies, that he hath counted us worthy to suffer [for] his name's 
sake 1 O for grace to be steadfast to the end, and that he would 
graciously pardon our unfaithfulness to him and to his cause and 
people ! Alas ! Z ion's condition lieth not near my heart as it 
should. "J. C."* 

Mrs. Carstairs had issue by her husband, three sons and four 
daughters. Her son William, who became principal of the uni- 
versity of Edinburgh after the Revolution, was one of the most 
remarkable men of his day, and from his great influence with 
King William, whom he had attended in all his campaigns, was 
called at court Cardinal Carstairs. None of her children had 
offspring with the exception of her daughters Jean and Sarah, 
who have numerous descendants. Jean married Principal Drew 
of St. Leonard's College, St. Andrews, and from her Principals 
M'Cormick and Hill derived descent. Sarah, the fourth daughter, 
and the youngest of the family, married her cousin-german, 
William Uunlop,f principal of Glasgow College ; and from her, 
besides other eminent men, are descended the present Alexander 
Dunlop, Esq., advocate, and the Kight Honorable David Boyle, 
lord president of the court of session. " It is somewhat singu- 
lar how completely the descendants of Carstairs are mixed, so 
far as the distinctions of church politics are concerned ; and it 
can not but draw forth a smile from any one versant in these 
matters in the present day, to observe, on the same genealogical 
table, and in very close juxtaposition, the names of Dr. George 
Cook, professor of moral philosophy, St. Andrews, and Mr. Alex- 
ander Dunlop, advocate, Edinburgh. Surely none would have 
thought, at least from their proceedings in church courts, that 
these two distinguished and opposite leaders of the church were 
pears of the same trce."| 

* Letters of Mr. John Cnrstairs, &c, p. 160. See another of Mrs. Carstairs' Let- 
ters in Appendix, No. IV. 

t Her auut, Klizabeth Mure, her mother's sister, was, as we have said before, 
married to Mr. Alexander Dunlop, minister of Paisley, who was the principal's 
father. 

t Life of Mr. John Carstairs, prefixed to his Letters, by the Rev. William Ferrie, 
page 9. 



DUCHESS OF HAMILTON. 129 



LADY ANNE, DUCHESS OF HAMILTON. 

Lady Anne, Duchess of Hamilton, was descended from an 
ancient and honorable family which originally came from Nor- 
mandy,* and which at one time was for fifty years together pre- 
sumptive heir to the crown of Scotland. From the year 1543, 
when King James V. died, leaving his only daughter, Queen 
Mary but a few days old, till the year 1593, when Prince Henry 
was born, there were only Queen Mary and her son King James, 
of the royal blood ; and, in the event of their death, the crown 
would have fallen by right to the then representative of the house 
of Hamilton, who was their nearest kinsman. f 

Lady Anne was born in the year 1 630. Her father, James, third 
marquis, and first duke of Hamilton,! a distinguished man in his 
day, espoused with ardent zeal the cause of Charles I., in which, 
however, he was actuated more by personal attachment to 
Charles than by a sincere desire to establish prelacy, or to ele- 
vate the royal prerogative. He was his majesty's high commis- 
sioner to the famous general assembly, which met at Glasgow 
in 1638, and he dissolved it abruptly; but the dissolution was 
disregarded, and the assembly continued to sit until they abol- 
ished prelacy. In the subsequent year he was sent down, by 
the king's orders, to Scotland, with a fleet and three regiments, 
to subdue the covenanters, and appeared in the firth of Forth. 
It was on this occasion that his mother, the marchioness dowager 
of Hamilton, headed a troop of horse on the shores of Leith to 
oppose his landing. § In 1648, an army being raised in Scotland 
with the design of rescuing Charles from the English parliament, 
and restoring him to liberty and power, without his being required 
to make any concessions to his subjects, the duke was appointed 
by the parliament commander-in-chief, and entered England in 
July, 1648. But the enterprise, which is usually called "The 

* Douglas's Peerage of Scotland, vol i., p. 689. 

t Burnet's Preface to bis Memoirs of the Dukes of Hamilton. 

t He was created duke of Hamilton, marquis of Clydesdale, earl of Arran and 
Cambridge, Lord Avon and Innerdale, by patent, dated at Oxford, 12th April, 1643, 
to him and the heirs male of his body, which failing, to his brother and the heirs 
male of his body, which failing, to the eldest heir female of the marquis's bod}*, 
without division, and the heirs male of the body of such heir female, they bearing 
the name and arms of Hamilton, which all failing, to the nearest legitimate heir 
whatsoever of the marquis. — Douglas's Peerage of Scotland, vol. i., p. 704. 

$ See p. 35. 



130 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

Engagement," proving unsuccessful, ultimately brought him to 
the block.* 

The mother of the subject of this sketch was Lady Mary 
Fielding, daughter of William, earl of Denbigh, and Lady Susan- 
na Villiers, sister to the duke of Buckingham. This lady was 
married to her father when he was only in the fourteenth year of 
his age. " Her person," says Burnet, " was noble and graceful, 
like the handsome race of the Villiers ; but, to such as knew 
her well, the virtues of her mind were far more shining. She 
was educated, from a chdd, in the court, and esteemed and hon- 
ored by all in it She was lady of the queen's bed-cham- 
ber, and admitted by her majesty into an entire confidence and 
friendship ; and not only was her honor unstained, but even her 
fame continued untouched with calumny, she being so strict to 
the severest rules as never to admit of those follies which pass 
in that style for gallantry." But her crowning excellence was 
her genuine piety. Though living in a court, she allowed no 
day to pass over her in which she did not spend large portions 
of her time in devotional exercises in her closet. She had to 
the marquis first three daughters, Mary, Anne, and Susanna ; and 
then three sons, Charles, James, and William ; but all her sons 
and her eldest daughter died young. A year before her death 
she was in a languishing condition, and at last fell into a con- 
sumption, which, after a few months' sickness, carried her off. 
About a month previous to the great change, calling for her chil- 
dren, she gave them her last blessing and embraces, and ordered 
that they might not be brought near her again, lest the sight of 
them should kindle too much tenderness in her mind, which she 
was then studying to raise above all created objects, and to fix 
upon the things of eternity. She died on the tenth of May, 
1638-f 

Thus Lady Anne, in the eighth year of her age, was bereaved 
of a valuable mother, from whose instructions and example, her 
opening mind, as may reasonably be supposed, might have derived 
the greatest advantage. Her religious education does not, how- 
ever, appear to have been neglected. Her father, who had been 
trained up by a pious mother, and who, there is reason to hope, 
notwithstanding the errors of his public life, into which he was 
betrayed by his warm loyalty and ardent ambition, had not ceased 
to make religion a matter of personal concern, always recom- 
mended to her the fear and love of God, as that in which he 

* Douglas's Peerage of Scotland, vol. i , p. 704, 70o. 
t Burnet's Memoirs of the Dukes of Hamilton, p. 407. 



DUCHESS OF HAMILTON. 131 

himself had found his only joy and repose. The following words 
are a part of one of his letters to her and her sister, Lady Su- 
sanna, which he wrote a little before his going to England on 
the fatal enterprise of the Engagement : " In all crosses even of 
the highest nature, there is no other remedy but patience, and 
with alacrity to submit to the good will and pleasure of our glo- 
rious Creator, and be contented therewith, which I advise you 
to learn in your tender age, having enjoyed that blessing myself, 
and found great comfort in it while involved in the midst of infin- 
ite dangers.'** 

When only a child, she was promised in marriage to Lord 
Lorn, eldest son of the marquis of Argyll, who suffered in 1661. 
About the eleventh year of her age, in 1641 or 1642, a contract 
of marriage was agreed to betwixt her father on her part, and the 
marquis of Argyll on the part of his son, Lord Lorn, to be cele- 
brated when' the two children should be of age. The marriage 
portion is a hundred thousand merks, the yearly jointure fifteen 
thousand merks, and the penalty to him who resiled thirty-six 
thousand merks, all remedy of law excluded.! These two noble- 
men were then, and had been for a considerable time before, on 
terms of very intimate friendship, but shortly after this contract 
was signed, " their sweetest wine became their sourest vinegar ;"J 
for they fell out and assumed positions of mutual hostility. Ham- 
ilton supported Charles : Argyll, changing his opinions, became 
the uncompromising champion of the covenanters. Two great 
parties thus came to be formed in the nation, of which these two 
noblemen were the respective heads ; the one called the Hamil- 
tons, the other, the Campbells ; and the Engagement was the 
great point upon which they were divided. In consequence of 
these differences, the contemplated marriage between Lady Anne 
and Lord Lorn never took place. || 

In times of civil commotion like those which then passed over 
Scotland and England, the leaders of the contending parties are 
peculiarly exposed to the risk of falling a sacrifice to the fury of 
one another ; and Lady Anne was doomed to undergo the trial 
of seeing her father, upon the disastrous issue of the Engagement, 
Condemned to suffer a violent death. His forces being routed 
by the English at Preston, on the 20th of August, he surrendered 

* Burnet's Memoirs of the Dukes of Hamilton, p. 404. 

t Descriptive Catalogue of the Hamilton Papers in the Miscellany of the Maitland 
Club, vol. iv., p. 202. 

X Scot of Scutstarvet's Staggering State of Scots Statesmen. 

|| Row's Lire of Robert Blair, pp. 178, 192, 198. Burnet's Memoirs of the Dukea 
of Hamilton, p. 204. 



132 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

himself to Lambert, at Uttoxeter, on the 25th of that month, and 
was imprisoned at Windsor. He succeeded in making his es- 
cape, but was retaken at Southwark, and committed to prison at 
St. James's. While he lay there, urgent applications were made 
to the marquis of Argyll, who had then the chief power in Scot- 
land, that the committee of estates would, as a means of saving 
at least his life, own that what he did was by the authority of 
that kingdom ; but Argyll declined to interfere. Lady Anne 
herself left no means untried to prevail with him to interpose for 
the life of her father ; but her exertions were without effect ; for, 
he said, that since the English had murdered their king, not- 
withstanding the protest of the Scottish commissioners against 
the deed, it was not to be expected that the interposition of the 
most influential in Scotland in other things would be of any 
weight ; nor was it fit they should any more address the murder- 
ers of their sovereign. 

On the 6th of February, 1649, her father was brought to trial 
before the same court which had condemned Charles to the block, 
and on the 6th of March he was sentenced to be beheaded on 
Friday, the 9th of that month. In terms of the sentence, he was 
executed in palace-yard, Westminster, in the forty-third year of 
his age. He died in a very pious manner, and with much forti- 
tude. Having delivered his last speech on the scaffold, he 
uttered a most fervent prayer, concluding with these words, " 
glorious God ! O blessed Father ! O holy Redeemer ! O gracious 
Comforter ! O holy and blessed Trinity ] I do render up my soul 
into thy hands, and commit it to the mediation of my Redeemer, 
praising thee for all thy dispensations, that it hath pleased thee 
to confer upon me, and even for this. Praise and honor, and 
thanks be to thee from this time forth, and for evermore !" After 
some religious discourse with Dr. Sibbald, whom he chose as 
his chaplain, on the scaffold, and who exhorted him to look to 
the fountain of the blood of Christ as his only hope, he embraced 
his servants who were present, commending their fidelity to him, 
and praying the Lord to bless them. He then turned to the ex- 
ecutioner and told him he was to engage shortly in prayer while 
he lay with his head on the block, after which he should give 
him a sign, by stretching out his right hand, telling him, at the 
same time, that he freely forgave him, as he did all the world. 
Upon the giving of the sign, the executioner at one blow severed 
the head of the unfortunate nobleman from his body, which was 
received in a crimson taffety scarf, by two of his servants kneel- 
ing by him, and was, together with his body, immediately put in 



DUCHESS OF HAMILTON. 133 

a coffin, which was ready on the scaffold, and, according to his 
orders, sent down by sea to Scotland, and interred in his family 
burial place at Hamilton.* 

To Lady Anne, who was now in the nineteenth year of her 
age, and to her sister, Susanna, who was somewhat younger, 
this was a great affliction. The loss of a father who loved them 
with an almost unequalled parental tenderness, and to whom they 
reciprocated the tenderest filial affection, was calculated, consid- 
ered in all its distressing circumstances, to lacerate their feelings 
in the most painful manner ; and the more especially at their 
green age, when the feelings were most tender, and when, con- 
sequently, the bereavement would pierce the heart with the 
intensest agony. It was happy for them that in their uncle, Duke 
William,! who was distinguished for his personal piety, as well 
as for his accurate views of divine truth, they found a relative 
both affectionately disposed, and well qualified to administer to 
them the religious comfort they needed, and to take the place of 
their father in caring for them. Lady Anne, who had already 
given evidence of the pious temper of her mind, sought under 
this dispensation consolation in religion ; and, by Divine grace, 
she was enabled to exercise that Christian resignation and sub- 
mission to the will of God, which is our bounden duty under the 
greatest trials of life. 

The last memorial she and her sister received of their father's 
affection for them, was a letter which he wrote to them on the 
day of his execution, but which would not come to their hands 
till he had passed from time into eternity. It is as follows : — 

" My most Dear Children : It hath pleased God to dispose 
of me, as I am immediately to part with this miserable life for a 
better ; so that I can not take that care of you which I both ought 
and would, if it had pleased my gracious Creator to have given 
me longer days : but his will be done, and I with alacrity submit 
to it, desiring you to do so, and that above all things you apply 
your hearts to seek him, to fear, serve, and love him ; and, then, 
doubt not but he will be a loving father to you while you are on 
earth, and thereafter crown you with eternal happiness. Time 
will permit me to say no more, so the Lord bless, guide, and pre- 
serve you, which is the prayer of your most loving father, 

" St. James's, 9th March, 1649. " Hamilton. 

* Burnet's Memoirs of the Dukes of Hamilton, pp. 401-405. 
t Their father was succeeded in his titles and estates, in terms of the patent, by 
his brother William. 

12 



134 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

" Let this remember me to my dear sisters, brothers, and other 
friends, for it is all I write."* 

On the day preceding his execution, he had written a letter 
to his brother William, requesting him to be a father to his two 
daughters, that they might not be forced to marry against their 
wills. Nor did Duke William fail in the duty he owed to these 
orphans. " He entailed his friendship for him [his brother]," 
savs Burnet, " on his daughters, who have desired me to acknowl- 
edge to the world that in him they met with the tenderness of a 
father, the kindness of a friend, and everything that was gener- 
ously noble and obliging." So high was the opinion he formed 
of Lady Anne that, at his going to England, he professed he was 
glad he had no sons to lie in her way to the enjoyment of her 
father's estates and honors, adding, that if he had forty sons, he 
rather wished it to her than he could do to any of them. On 
his part, nothing was wanting to promote her happiness : what- 
ever his estates could procure was at her command, and the au- 
thority with which he invested her at so early an age, indicates 
the confidence he placed in her judgment and discretion. Writing 
to her from Campheer, 10th June, 1649, he says, " Dear Niece: 
Amongst all my just afflictions, there is none lies so heavy upon 
me as that I am still made incapable of paying that duty to you 
which I owe you. It is the greatest debt I owe on earth, and 
which would most joy me to pay, as well from inclination as 
from nature and obligations ; but all happiness being denied me, 
I can not hope for that which would be the greatest. Before 
this I hope you are settled in Hamilton, where you have, as is 
most just, the same power your father had, and I beseech you to 
dispose as absolutely upon everything that is there. All I have 
interest in, so long as they will acknowledge me, will obey you ; 
and I shall earnestly beg, that, if there be any failings, (either 
from persons, or in providing what you shall think fit to call for, 
which the fortune can procure, you advertise me thereof, and if 
it be not helped, (so my fortune can do it), let me be as infamous 
as I am unfortunate. I will trouble you no longer, but pray the 
Lord to bless you with comfort and health. — Dear niece, your 
real servant, " Hamilton."! 

As a farther proof of his esteem and affection for her, he nom- 
inated and appointed her (failing heirs male of his own body) 
his sole executrix, in his last will, written by himself, at the 
Hague, in Holland, on the 28th day of May, 1650, and freely 

* Burnet's Memoirs of the Dukes of Hamilton, p. 397. t Ibid. 



DUCHESS OF HAMILTON. 135 

bequeathed to her " all his jewels, silver plate, hangings, picture- 
broads, and whatsoever goods were his to be disposed of. " And 
after nominating and appointing, in the event of her removal by 
death before himself, her sister, Susanna, his sole executrix, and 
freely bequeathing to her the foresaid articles, he recommends 
the care of his five daughters to such of his nieces as should 
succeed to his dignity and estate, expressing his confidence that 
they would be careful of their education and faithful in paying 
them what had been provided for them.* 

We shall quote at length another of the letters of this amiable 
man to Lady Anne, both because it affords a pleasing illustration 
of his own Christian character, and because, from its tone, it is 
evident that she had then been brought, in good earnest, to attend 
to the things of God and eternity. The letter was written only 
eight days after the terrible defeat and slaughter which the Scot- 
tish royalists sustained, on sabbath, July 20, 1651, at Inverkeith- 
ing, in Fife, from the English parliamentary army under Crom- 
well, f This disaster greatly discouraged the royalists ; and what 
rendered their condition still more desperate was, that Cromwell 
was now between the king and the northern counties of Scotland, 
which were most devoted to the king's interest, and from which 
he expected provisions and supplies of men. It being thus im- 
possible to maintain the war longer in Scotland, his majesty re- 
solved to march into England, where he hoped for large addi- 
tional forces. But many of his soldiers, and some of his officers, 
broken in spirit by their late defeat, and despairing of future suc- 
cess, deserted the army. It was in these circumstances, and 
when about to march into England, that Duke William wrote the 
following letter! : — 

" Dear Niece : Indeed I know not what to say to you ; T 
would fain say something more encouraging than my last was, 
but I can not lie ; our condition is no better, and since that time 
we have a thousand men (I fear twice that number) run from our 
army. Since the enemy shuns fighting with us, except upon 
advantage, we must either starve, disband, or go with a handful 
of men into England. This last seems to be the least ill, yet it 
appears very desperate to me for more reasons than I would 

■* Commissariot of Edinburgh, 28th of September, 1652, MS. in her majesty's 
register house, Edinburgh. In that record, the will of the duke is recorded at 
length. It is a very interesting document, from the remarkably pious spirit which 
it breathes throughout 

t So prodigious was the slaughter, that a rill at the scene of action, called Pinker- 
ton Burn, is said to have run red with blood for three days. 

t Burnet's Memoirs of the Dukes of Hamilton, p. 427. 



vl 



136 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

trouble you with ; I fear your own reason will afford you too 
many. Dear niece, it is not your courage I will desire you to 
make use of in this extremity ; look for strength to bear it from 
a higher power ; all your natural virtues will not resist it ; there- 
fore, look to Him who hath in former times assisted you to resist 
a great affliction, and can do it again, if you seek to" him aright ; 
you have already lost so much, that all other worldly losses were 
drowned in that. Those you meet with now are Christian exer- 
cises, wherewith,ofttimes.the Lord visits his own, to wean their af- 
fections from things here below, that we may place them upon him- 
self, in whom we have all things ; and if we could, as we ought, 
set our hearts upon him, we should find ourselves very little con- 
cerned in most things which bring us greatest trouble here on 
earth, where we are but for a minute in our way to eternity. O ! 
consider that word eternity, and you will find that we struggle 
here for that, that's even less than nothing ; why trouble we our- 
selves for earthly losses ? for when we have lost all we have, 
there are thousands as dear to God as Ave, as poor as we. We 
are rich though we lose the whole world if we gain him : let us 
set before our eyes the example of those, who, to give testimony 
to the truth, rejoiced to lay down their lives; nay, let us, with 
humble presumption, follow the pattern of our blessed Savior, 
who for our sakes suffered more than man can think on, the bur- 
den of all our sins, and the wrath of his Father : and shall we 
then repine to lay down our lives for him when he calls for it 
from us, to give us a nearer admittance to him than we can hope 
for while we are clogged with our clay tenements. Dear niece, 
I should never be weary to talk with "you, though this be a sub- 
ject, I confess, I can not speak of well ; but even that happi- 
ness is bereft me, by the importunity of a crowd of persons that 
are now in the room with me, grudg'ing the time I take in telling 
you that while I am, I am yours, &c. " [Hamilton.] 

" Stirling, 28th July, 1651."* 

Duke William, having proceeded to England and engaged in 
battle with Cromwell's forces at Worcester, was mortally wound- 
ed. After receiving the wound, and feeling that his end was 
approaching, he wrote to his lady a letter, which contains the fol- 
lowing reference to Lady Anne and her sister : " I will not so 
much as in a letter divide my dear nieces and you. The Lord 
grant you may be constant comforts to one ano'ther in this life, 
and give you all eternal happiness with your Savior in the life 

* Burnet's Memoirs of the Dukes of Hamilton, p. 426. 



DUCHESS OF HAMILTON. 137 

to come ! To both of your cares I recommend my poor children. 
Let your great work be to make them early acquainted with God, 
and their duties to him ; and though they may suffer many wants 
here before removal from hence, yet they will find an inexhaust- 
ible treasure in the love of Christ." 

This nobleman died on the 12th of the month on which the 
above letter is dated, nine days after he had received the wound, 
in the thirty-fifth year of his age, and was interred in the cathe- 
dral church of Worcester.* 

After her uncle's death, Lady Anne, who succeeded him in his 
titles and estates, experienced the vicissitudes of fortune to which 
many of the Scottish nobility were subjected for their opposi- 
tion to Cromwell, who had now laid Scotland prostrate at his 
feet. Her father was excepted from the benefit of Cromwell's 
act of grace and pardon, in 1654, and his estates were forfeited, ' 
four hundred pounds a year being reserved out of them to Lady 
Anne, and two hundred pounds a year to her sister. f This was 
no doubt sufficient to secure them from privation ; but for a fam- 
ily to be thus reduced which once possessed ample revenues, and 
was at one time presumptive heir to the Scottish throne, afforded 
a striking instance of the mutability of worldly wealth and great- 
ness. Whether even this sum was regularly paid we do not know ; 
but it is affirmed by tradition that, for a series of years, she was 
in so impoverished a condition as to have been dependent upon 
a faithful female servant — the only one that remained with her — 
who employed herself incessantly in spinning to procure the 
means of subsistence for her grace .| It is pleasing, on the same 
authority, to record that, when the Restoration put an end to the 
misfortunes of the duchess by reinvesting her with her estates, 
she " expressed her gratitude to her affectionate domestic by the 
substantial gift of a piece of land, near Lesmahago, sufficient to 
maintain her in ease and comfort all the rest of her life."|| 

During Cromwell's administration she resided alternately at 
Brodvvich castle in Arran, and Strathaven castle, which was from 
an early period one of the seats of the Hamilton family. § The 
castle of Strathaven, or Avondale, stands upon a rocky eminence 
at the town of Strathaven, on the banks of a small rivulet called 

* Anderson's Memoirs of the House of Hamilton, p. 145. 

t Douglas's Peerage of Scotland, vol. i.. p. 706. 

t Tradition, in this instance, has probably to some extent exaggerated the facta 
of the case. 

|| Chambers's Picture of Scotland, vol. i., pp. 349, 350. 

§ It is said to have been built by Andrew Stewart, grandson of Murdoch, duka 
of Albany. — New Statistical Account of Scotland, Lanarkshire, Avondale. 
12* 



138 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

Pomilion, which winds round the greater part of it, and falls into 
the Avon about a mile below. Though now in a very dilapida- 
ted state, it was then in good condition and a place of consider- 
ble strength, being surrounded by a strong wall, with turrets at 
certain distances, and having the entrance secured by a draw- 
bridge. A tradition is still current at Clydesdale respecting the 
duchess, while she resided in this castle in the time of Crom- 
well, which places her fortitude in adversity in a very interest- 
ing light, and reminds us of the fearless spirit of her grandmother. 
To the hero of the commonwealth, whose vengeance was directed 
against her family on account of that determined opposition to 
him which had issued fatally both as to her father and uncle, she 
had, as might be anticipated, no friendly feelings ; and it is said 
that when one of his generals passed the castle with some military 
going from Hamilton to Ayrshire, she gave orders to fire upon 
him as he approached the town of Strathaven. The general in- 
quired who lived there, and being told it was a lady, he replied, 
" She must be a bold woman, indeed."* In the days of her ad- 
versity, her tenants and vassals in that neighborhood showed to 
her ardent friendship and attachment. This she never forgot, 
when favored with more prosperous days ; and she made an an- 
nual visit to Stral haven at the celebration of the Lord's supper, 
till she was prevented by the infirmities of old age.f 

In the year 1656, she was married to Lord William Douglas, 
eldest son of William, first marquis of Douglas. He was born 
24th December, 1634, and created earl of Selkirk, Lord Daer 
and Shortcleuch, by patent, dated 4th August, 1646, to him and 
his males heir whatsoever. He was fined one thousand pounds 
by Cromwell's act of grace and pardon, 1654. The minutes of 
a contract of marriage between the duchess and this nobleman, 
with consent of his father, the marquis of Douglas, dated 1656, 
are still preserved among the Hamilton Papers.^ After the Res- 
toration, in consequence of a petition from the duchess, he had, 
by letters-patent, on the 20th of September, 1660, superadded to 
his own honors the title and precedency of the duke of Hamil- 

* Anderson's Memoirs of the House of Hamilton, p. 150. Afier the death of the 
duchess, ii, 1716, the castle of Strathaven was allowed to fall into disrepair ; and, as 
Chambers says, it. now "overhangs the town of Strathaven with its shattered and 
hazard walls, like the spirit of Pineal represented by Osstaii, as looking down 
trom the clouds upon Ins living descendants "—Picture of Scotland, vol. i. p. 3-19. 

1 housb now m ruins, the castle is still a heautiful feature in our landscape '—New 
Statistical Acconnt of Scotland. Lanarkshire, Avondale. 

t Anderson's Memoirs of the House of Hamilton, p. 150. 
_ t Catalogue of the Hamilton Papers in the Miscellany of the Maitland Club, vol. 



DUCHESS OF HAMILTON. 139 

ton, and other titles, in right of his wife, on whom these honors 
had devolved.* 

As might naturally be expected, the duchess hailed the resto- 
ration of Charles II. with satisfaction and joy; for it put her in 
possession of her father's estates and honors, of which she had 
been deprived by Cromwell. But the policy of the government 
of Charles in overthrowing the presbyterian church of Scotland, 
and in ejecting the non-conforming ministers from their churches, 
she contemplated with different feelings. This measure she 
perceived to be at once unwise in principle, and destructive in 
tendency. The duke, her husband, at a meeting of the Scottish 
council, held at London, after the Restoration, to determine as to 
the ecclesiastical government to be established in Scotland, rea- 
soned against the setting up of bishops. f He also opposed in 
the privy council, the act which they passed at Glasgow, October 
1, 1662, requiring all ministers who had not conformed to prelacy, 
to desist from preaching, and to withdraw immediately from their 
parishes. He told the council that the numerous ministers liable 
to ejectment were highly esteemed and beloved by their people ; 
and that it would be impossible to find a competent number of 
well qualified men to fill their places.^ The duchess was pre- 
cisely of the same sentiments. She may not have studied, and 
Bishop Burnet informs us that, she told him she had not studied the 
subject of church government, and arrived at the same enlightened 
and thorough conviction of the jus divimim of presbytery, to which 
she had arrived on other points. But she saw that the ministers 
to be visited by ejectment were men of distinguished piety, of 
great diligence in the discharge of their ministerial duties, and 
of extensive usefulness in promoting religion and good order 
among the people. Not to speak, then, of her leaning to the 
side of the presbyterian faith, which is manifest from her ad- 
hering to, and favoring it during her whole life, through evil 
report as well as good report ; as a woman of piety, and a friend 
of public order, she regretted the ejectment of such men, as the 
infliction of a great calamity on the country. § 

The duchess, who had much influence upon the duke, greatly 
contributed, there is little doubt, to infuse into his mind favorable 
feelings toward the covenanters, and to dispose him to make ex- 
ertions for mitigating the oppressions under which they groaned. 

* Catalogue of the Hamilton Papers in the Miscellany of the Maitland Club, vol. 
iv., p. 17-2. 
t Bow's Life of Robert Blair, p. 390. 
% Burnet' 8 History of His Own Times, vol. i, p. 261. $ Ibid., p. 480. 



140 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

Such feelings he entertained, and such exertions he made. 
After the Restoration, he opposed, as we have seen, the setting 
up of bishops, and the act of Glasgow, by which some hundreds 
of ministers were ejected from their charges. During the per- 
secution he often acted as a drag chain upon the more violent of 
the members of the privy council, advocating a moderate and 
pacific policy, and opposing the terrible measures which were 
madly adopted against religion and liberty by the ruling party. 
In the parliament of 1673, he distinguished himself by his oppo- 
sition to Lauderdale, whose rapacity, tyranny, and oppression, 
were become intolerable, demanding that the state of the nation 
should be examined, and its grievances represented to the king, 
before the supplies were granted. On repairing to court, toward 
the end of November, 1675, he earnestly dealt with the king for 
a more ample indulgence to the nonconforming ministers, by 
which he greatly displeased his majesty, who told him he had 
been informed of his too great kindness to, and compliance with, 
the non-conformists of Scotland.* In 1676, he was removed 
from his place in the privy council for his manly and spirited 
opposition to the oppressive sentence of the council against the 
pious and patriotic Baillie of Jerviswood, who, for simply rescu- 
ing his brother-in-law, Mr. James Kirk ton, from Captain Car- 
stairs, was lined j£500 sterling, and ordained to lie in prison till 
the fine was paid.f lie was also prohibited to leave Scotland, 
but, notwithstanding this prohibition, he and thirteen others went 
up to court in March, 1678, to complain of the arbitrary and op- 
pressive administration of Lauderdale in regard to the Highland 
host, the imposition of the bond, the charging them with law- 
borrows, and other grievances under which the country labored. 
On the breaking out of the insurrection in Scotland in May, 
1679, he and the other Scottish lords of his party, then in Lon- 
don, offered — an offer which was rejected — to restore peace to 
the country without having recourse to force or the effusion of 
blood, provided the sufferings of the people were alleviated.^; 
To these notices other facts of a similar kind, equally favorable 
to the patriotism and humanity of the duke might be added. 
But we shall only further state, that when some were tortured in 
1681, in reference to the earl of Argyll's conspiracy, he opposed 
such cruel proceedings, alleging that, at this rate, they might, 
without accusers or witnesses, take any person off the street and 

# Burnet's History of His Own Times, vol. i , p. 565. Descriptive Catalogue 
of tbe Hamilton Papers in the Miscellauy of the Maitlaod Club. vol. iv ., p. 17s. 
t Wodrow's History, vol. ii., 327, J Douglas's Peerage, vol. i., p, 708. 



DUCHESS OF HAMILTON. 141 

torture him ; and he immediately retired, refusing to be present, 
on the ground, that if the party should die in the torture, the 
judges were liable for murder, or at least severely culpable. * 

Nor was the duchess of Hamilton alone, among the ladies of 
high life, in moderating the persecution by the influence they 
exerted over those most nearly related to them. The ladies and 
other female relatives of several others of the members of his 
majesty's government were friendly to the persecuted cause ; and 
by their influence, as well as by the deference shown to their 
preddections, individuals' were often exempted from the hard- 
ships into which they would otherwise have been brought, while 
the violence of the persecution was sometimes considerably mit- 
igated. Of this class were the first wife of the duke of Lauder- 
dale,! the duchess of Rothes,! both the first and the second 
wives of the earl of Argyll, § the countess of Dundonald,|| and 
others. 

After the Restoration, Hamilton palace, which is situated in a 
valley between the town of Hamilton and the Clyde, was the 
chief place of the residence of the duchess. Since the time she 
dwelt in that princely mansion, its aspect has very much changed. 
Great additions, in the best architectural style, were made to it 
in the year 1826, and, as a whole, it is now considered the most 
magnificent residence in Scotland, being extremely splendid in 
its interior, aud having a picture gallery peculiarly rich in paint- 
ings, by the greatest Italian masters. In the time of the duchess, 
it was a large building of moderate external elegance. 

The town of Hamilton being in the vicinity of her place of 
residence, she at all times made the welfare, both temporal and 
spiritual, of the inhabitants of that town and parish, the object of 
her special concern. As an instance of her desire to promote 

* Fountainhall's Notes, p. ]03. See also Macaula3's History of England, vol. ii., 
pp. 118, 11^ 121, 122. 

t Lady Anne Home, second daughter of Alexander, first earl of Home. She was 
a great means of softening the spirit of Lauderdale, who during her lifetime was 
more moderate than after her death. From Sir George Mackenzie's Memoirs of 
Affairs in Scotland, we learn that she promised to procure indulgences for Welsh 
and other Presbyterian ministers. — Wodrow's History, vol. ii., p. 244. She died at 
Paris, about 1671. 

t Lady Anne Lindsay, daughter of the earl of Crawford and Lindsay. A notice 
of this lady is given afterward. 

§ His first wife was Lady Mary Stuart, eldest daughter of James, fifth earl of 
Moray. She died in May, 1668. His second wife was Lady Anne M'Kenzie, 
second daughter of Colin, first earl of Seaforth, and relict of Alexander, first earl of 
Belcarres. A sketch of this lady is also given afterward. 

|| This lady was Euphemia, daughter of Sir William Scot, of Ardross. She at- 
tended field conventicles, and entertained the field preachers at her palace at Paisley. 
— Blackadder's Memoirs MS. copy in Adv. Library. 



142 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

their spiritual good, as well as of her pious care for the sanctity 
of the sabbath, it may be mentioned that, in co-operation -with 
the duke, her husband, and the bailies of Hamilton, she obtained, 
in 1661, an act of parliament changing the fairs of Hamilton 
from Saturday to Thursday, and its weekly markets from Satur- 
day to Friday. The reason inducing the parties to apply for 
this act, was, as is stated in the act itself, their " observing the 
daily inconveniences arising through the weekly market being 
upon the Saturday, whereby the people resorting to it were much 
occasioned in their return homeward to be late in the night, and 
sometime to encroach upon the Lord's day next ensuing, and so 
scandalous to God's worship therein."* 

To her zeal for the temporal good of the town of Hamilton, 
ample testimony is borne by the town council records. In 1668, 
Charles II. granted a charter to her, and in 1670 the magistrates 
then in office accepted a charter from her, with consent of her 
husband, by which Hamilton was constituted the chief burgh of 
the regality and dukedom of Hamilton.! And " during the course 
of her long life she was a benefactor to the town of Hamilton, as 
she endeavored to ameliorate the condition of the inhabitants, 
and always acted strictly in conformity to the charter. Hence 
the bailies and town council seem at all times to have looked up 
to her with a kind of filial respect, and were always ready to 
comply with her requests, which indeed were never incompatible 
with the interests of the community. "J 

During the persecution applications were often made to her to 
employ her interest in behalf of the persecuted. To such appli- 
cations she always listened with Christian sympathy, and was 
ever ready to do all in her power to afford assistance" and relief 
to the oppressed. The trials she had passed through in early 
life, had exerted the most beneficial influence in the formation of 
her character. The loss of an affectionate and beloved father, in 
circumstances so deeply distressing, and the death of arf endeared 
uncle, also in painful circumstances, had chastened her spirit and 
strengthened that compassion for the suffering, and that benevo- 
lent interest in the welfare and happiness of others which she 
exemplified throughout life. 

* Arts of Scottish parliament. 

t By this ilmrtpr the family of Hamilton has the right of appointing the town 
clerk, ami of elertins two bailies annually, from a list of six names chosen by the 
council (but including the bailies of the former year) from their own number. The 
duke and dm hess elected the first council, hut the riuht of electing a new council 
annually in fuiure, was vested for ever in the council of the precediug year. In the 
old deeds, the duchess is styled •■high and mighty princess." 

J Anderson's Memoirs of the House of Hamilton, pp. 488, 489. 



DUCHESS OF HAMILTON. 143 

In the fate of the youthful Hugh M'Kail, who suffered martyr- 
dom in 1666, she took a particular interest. His youth, his 
amiable dispositions, his eminent piety, and his promising useful- 
ness as a minister of the gospel, as well as the excellent charac- 
ter of his father, excited her compassion, and after he had been 
tortured and indicted to stand trial for treason before the court of 
justiciary, she sent with his brother, Mr. Matthew, ten days 
before his trial commenced, a letter to the duke of Rothes, his 
majesty's high commissioner, earnestly beseeching him to do 
what he could to save the life of this excellent young man. 
With this letter, and another to the commissioner, from the lady 
marchioness of Douglas, her mother-in-law, bis brother went, on 
the 8th of December, from Edinburgh to Glasgow, where the 
commissioner was at that time on a visit. What effect, the inter- 
cessions of these ladies had upon the duke, or whether they 
moved him to write to the king on the subject, we have not as- 
certained. His majesty, however, not long after this, and pre- 
vious to the execution of M'Kail, sent down a pardon to the 
prisoners concerned in the Pentland rising, who were not exe- 
cuted, and ordered them to be sent to Barbadoes. But the par- 
don failed of taking effect, through the baseness of Archibald 
Sharp, who, besides feeling toward the Presbyterians that invet- 
erate malignity which has, in every age, been characteristic of 
apostates, never forgot the terms in which he fancied M'Kail 
had spoken concerning him in a sermon.* The prelate who 
had been biding his time had now full opportunity given him of 
gratifying his mortal hatred and revenge, and determined that, 
whoever was spared, M'Kail should not escape, he concealed 
the king's pardon till M'Kail and four others with him were exe- 
cuted.! 

* M'Kail's sermon referred to was preached from the Pong; of Solomon, chapter 
i., verse 7 The passage which proved so offensive was an elegant apostrophe, in 
which the preacher appealed to persecutors of past ages, whether God had not 
proved faithful to his tlireatenings against persecutors, as well as to his promise of 
deliverance to his church and people "Let Pharaoh," sai.i he, "let Haman. let 
Judas, let Herod, let each of them speak from experience of God's faithfulness ! Let 
all, then, have ears to hear, and hearing, acknowledge that those who have made 
themselves remarkable for persecution. God has stigmatized by his judgments." The 
malicious gloss which the party then in power put upon these words was, that the 
prea< her had publicly marked out and threatened or stigmatized the king, Commis- 
sioner Midilleton, Archbishop Sharp, and the duke of York, the kind's brother, under 
the characters of Pharaoh, Hainan, Judas, and Herod- — Coltness Collections, p. 47. 
Sharp was peculiarly sensitive to the slightest allusion, real or supposed, to the sub- 
ject of his perfidy and apostasy ; nor did he fail, when he found opportunity, to re- 
venge himself on such as offended him on this score. 

t Naphtali, p. 363. M'Crie's Memoirs of Veitch, &c, p. 36. Row's Life of 
Robert Blair, p. 506. 



144 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

Another sufferer on whose side the sympathies of the duchess 
were enlisted, was Mr. James Mitchell, who had attempted the 
assassination of Archbishop Sharp. It can not be supposed that 
Mitchell's attempt, which was condemned by the great body of 
the presbyterians, Avas approved of by a lady so well informed, and 
so opposed to all extreme courses, as was the duchess. Still the 
severity with which he was treated excited commiseration in 
many who condemned his rash and criminal act ; and after he 
was laid in prison, some of this class of the presbyterians were 
Aery active in endeavoring to obtain his liberation, and the more 
especially as they entertained apprehensions which, as was 
afterward proved, were too well founded, that he would be 
brought to the scaffold, a punishment for his offence, in their 
estimation, unduly severe. Among other means, one of them, a 
lady, applied to the duchess, when she passed through Edinburgh, 
in November, 1C75, on her way to London, requesting her to 
exert her influence at court to procure his liberty, or secure his 
personal safety. She received the application with much cour- 
tesy, and expressed her readiness to do everything in her power 
in behalf of Mitchell, who had then been imprisoned for nearly two 
years. Mr. John Carstairs, in a letter to Mr. Robert M'Ward, 
dated November 29, 1675, speaking on this subject, says: " D. 
H. [Duke Hamilton] passed here [Edinburgh] with his lady and 

eldest daughter, for London, Monday last My friend* 

spoke to her [the duchess] about our friend [Mitchell]. She 
Avas very civil, and told her there needed no interposing, if 
there should be any access to deal for that person. "f But though 
Charles had considerable respect for the duchess, and, ungrateful 
though he Avas, sometimes expressed to her, and probably in 
some measure felt the obligations under Avhich he lay to her 
father and her uncle, Avho had sacrificed their lives in his cause, 
yet, at this time, her patronage of the presbyterians had lowered 
her in the scale of the royal faA^or ; and her intercessions Avere 
besides resisted, and again rendered ineffectual by Archbishop 
Sharp, whose vengeance would be appeased with nothing less 
than the blood of the man Avho had made an attempt on his 
life. 

In 1670, Avhen Archbishop Leighton proposed his scheme of 
accommodation betAyeen the episcopalians and the presbyterians, 
of which, among all his party, Dr. Burnet was the most zealous 
supporter, it was considered highly desirable to secure the me- 

* Might not this be Mrs. James Durham ? 
t Wodiow MSS-, vol. lix., folio, No. 38. 



DUCHESS OF HAMILTON. 145 

diating influence of the duchess of Hamilton, in consequence of 
the high esteem in which she was held by the presbyterians, 
and the great weight she had among them. Leighton sent to the 
western counties six of the most popular prelatic ministers he 
could engage, to go round the country to preach in vacant 
churches, and to argue in support of the accommodation with 
such as should come to hear them. Burnet, the most eminent 
of them, on his services being secured, went, as if on a visit to 
the duke of Hamilton, but in reality with the view of gaining 
over the duchess to the plan, and of prevailing with her to use 
her influence in inducing the presbyterian ministers to embrace 
it. " I was desired," says he, " to go into the western parts, and 
to give a true account of matters, as I found them there. So I 
went as on a visit to the duke of Hamilton, whose duchess was 
a woman of great piety and great parts. She had much credit 
among them [the presbyterians] ; for she passed for a zealous 
presbyterian, though," he adds, " she protested to me she never 
entered into the points of controversy, and had no settled opinion 
about forms of government; only she thought their ministers 
were good men, who kept the country in great quiet and order ; 
they were, she said, blameless in their lives, devout in their 
way, and diligent in their labors."* 

The duchess cordially approved of the plan proposed in the 
accommodation of admitting the presbyterian ministers to the 
vacant churches. " The people were all in a frenzy," says 
Burnet, " and were in no disposition to any treaty. The furious- 
est men among them were busy in conventicles, inflaming them 

* Burnet's History of His Own Times, vol. i., pp. 480, 481, 508. In this, and in 
the subsequent accounts given by Burnet of what the duchess said in reference to 
the presbyterian ministers, there may, without questioning his veracity, be room 
for thinking that, unintentionally, no doubt, he gives to her speeches a coloring de- 
rived from his own peculiar leanings and sentiments, just as we every day see the 
narration of facts derive a coloring from the same cause. For example, we have 
some doubt whether the duchess, in speaking of the presbyterian ministers, would 
say, in these precise terms, that they were " devout in their way," as if her own 
personal piety was of a different type from theirs ; the fact being that it was similar 
in character to that of the strictest of the covenanters — to that of such men as Dur- 
ham, Binning, and the Guthries — and that her views of doctrine, like theirs, were 
strictly Calvinistic. Such were the piety and religious sentiments of her uncle, 
Duke William, from whom she derived much religious instruction and spiritual 
profit, and such were the piety and religious sentiments of her daughter, Catherine, 
duchess of Atholl, who was educated under her own eye. Indeed it appears that 
it was her personal piety and her Calvinistic views of doctrine, more than any set- 
tled opinion she had as to church government, which caused her decided preference 
of the preaching of the ejected ministers. The probability then is, that she simply 
said that they were devout, and that Burnet, influenced in his ideas of personal 
piety by his Arminian sentiments, unconsciously represented her as saying that they 
were " devout in their way," 

13 



146 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

agamst all agreements : so she thought that if the more moderate 
presbyterians were put in vacant churches, the people would 
grow tamer, and be taken out of the hands of the mad preachers 
that were then most in vogue : this," she added, " would likewise 
create confidence in them in the government ; for they were now 
so possessed with prejudice as to believe that all that was pro- 
posed was only an artifice, to make them fall out among them- 
selves, and deceive them at last."* She got many of the more 
moderate of the presbyterian ministers to come tu Burnet, and 
they all talked in a similar strain. 

From the manner in which the terms of the accommodation 
were represented to her by Burnet, and from her not having 
closely turned her attention to the study of church government, 
she did not, however, perceive that the scheme, being at variance 
with presbyterian principles, would have ultimately secured the 
triumph of prelacy, and could not, therefore, be conscientiously 
accepted by the presbyterians. Even after the presbyterian 
ministers had held meetings on the subject, and had rejected the 
proposed measure as inconsistent with their principles, she en- 
deavored to prevail with them to embrace it. She " sent for 
some of them, [and for] Hutchinson in particular. She said she 
did not pretend to understand nice distinctions, and the terms of 
dispute : here was plain sense : the country might be again at 
quiet, and the rest of those that were outed admitted to churches 
on terms that seemed to all reasonable men very easy ; their 
rejecting this would give a very bad character of them, and would 
have very bad effects, of which they might see cause to repent 
when it would be too late."f But, fortunately, the advice of the 
duchess, which was, in fact, though she might not perceive it, to 
advise them to give up without a struggle the cause for which 
they had all suffered, and for which not a few of their country- 
men had already sacrificed their lives, was not complied with, 
and thus the presbylerian ministers proved true to their own 
consistency, and to the cause which they had vowed to defend. 
After conversing with Hutchinson, and urging upon his attention 
the considerations already mentioned, she found that there was 
no chance of the scheme being accepted, and told Burnet that all 
she could draw from him was, that he saw the generality of his 
brethren were resolved not to enter into it ; that it would prove a 
bone of contention, and instead of healing old breaches, would 
create new ones 4 Thus the whole negotiation about the accom- 

* Burnet's History of His Own Times, vol. i., p. 481. t Ibid., p. 511. 

t Ibid. 



THE DUCHESS OF HAMILTON. 147 

modation ended in nothing. There is, however, no doubt that 
the great anxiety of the duchess to get the presbyterians to em- 
brace the accommodation, proceeded from her sincere desire to 
see them delivered from the tyranny and oppression under which 
they had so long groaned. 

In testimony of the same amiable features of her character, 
the following passage from a letter written by Mr. John Carstairs 
to Mr. Robert M'VVard, November 29, 1675, may be quoted : 
" Things," says he, " have still a sad aspect on us, and that dis- 
appointing parliament being prorogued, it's like we shall tyran- 
nize it here at the old rate. D. H. [Duke Hamilton] went here, 
with his lady and eldest daughter, for London, Monday last, not 
sent for by the king, but it's like to see what he could do for the 
advocates. His lady told a person of honor, as I heard, that it 
should be seen that they went upon no account of their own, but 
for the good of the country, and of religion, though without all 
hope of coming speed as to anything, and desired that friends 
might remember them."* The duke, on this visit to the court, 
urged upon the king, as we have seen before, the granting of a 
larger indulgence as the most effectual means of quieting the 
country ; a proposal with which his majesty, guided by his infa- 
mous adviser, Lauderdale, refused to comply, taunting the duke 
as a favorer of nonconformists. 

One thing which recommended Burnet to the duchess, besides 
his talents, was his tolerant sentiments in regard to matters of 
religion ;f for although connected with the prelatic church, and 
from principle a supporter of prelacy, his temper was moderate, 

* Wodrow MSS., vol. lix., folio, No. 38. 

t So liigh was the opinion slie formed of the talents and moderation of Burnet, 
that she engaged him to undertake the task of compiling memoirs of her father and 
uncle, from the many papers in her possession relating both to their public conduct, 
and to their personal character. These papers she had carefully preserved, her un- 
cle Williiim having charged her to keep them wilh the same care as sh? kept the 
writings of her estate, as they would be found to contain a full" justification of her 
father's as well as his own public actings; and desirous lo vindicate the memory 
of these beloved relatives, who, notwithstanding the errors of their political lives, 
possessed many estimable qualities, she put all these documents into Burnet's hands. 
" ThiSj" says he, " was a very great trust, and I made no ill use of it. 1 found there 
materials for a very large history. I wrote it with great sincerity, and concealed 
none of their errors. 1 did, indeed, conceal several things that related to the kins:. 
I left out some passages that were in his letters, in some of which was too much 
weakness, and in others too much craft and anger.'' (Burnet's History of his Own 
Times, vol. i., p. 516 ) The work was printed at London, in 1677, and the Epistle 
Dedicatory, which is addressed to the king, is dated London, 21st October 1673. 
It brings out the character of the duchess's father in a much more favorable litjht 
than Clarendon brings it out in his History of the Rebellion, but that history, which 
was not published for many years after its author's death, has, not without ground, 
been suspected of having been corrupted by the Oxford gentlemen who pub- 
lished it. See Appendix, No. V. 



148 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

and, like Leighton, he was an enemy to persecution. In the 
family of Hamilton the sufferings of the presbyterians, for adhe- 
ring to their covenant, were not unfrequently the subject of con- 
versation ; and, when present on such occasions, Burnet was 
accustomed to speak in terms of high respect of several of the 
ejected ministers and sufferers, as well as of commiseration for 
them, and even expressed so high an opinion of the national cov- 
enant which abjured popery, as to affirm it to be his conviction, 
that it would never be well with Scotland until it was renewed. 
This spirit, so very different from that which animated the great 
body of the prelatic clergy, was highly gratifying to her grace, 
with whose feelings and sentiments it so closely harmonized.* 

Though the duchess may not have desisted from hearing the 
curates of Hamilton, the parish in which she usually resided — 
for on the subject of hearing the curates the presbyterians were 
divided in sentiment, and she confessedly belonged to the less 
rigid portion of the body — yet she frequented the ministrations 
of the ejected ministers, taking her children along with her ; and 
she was in the habit of attending the sacrament of the Lord's 
supper as administered by them, in various parts of the country. 
When Mr. William Violant became indulged minister at Cambus- 
nethan, the Lord's supper was frequently administered in that 
place, and was resorted to by people from all quarters. Among 
others, the duchess regularly went over to observe the ordi- 
nance, and, on such occasions, it was her practice to reside at 
Coltness, in the family of Sir Thomas Stewart, who was himself 
a man of sincere piety, and whose lady was distinguished, in 
no ordinary degree, for her Christian virtues and graces.f 

In attending the indulged ministers, she w 7 as keeping within 
the strict limits of law ; but, breaking through the fences of the 
law, she sometimes also countenanced conventicles with her 
presence. This was one main reason of the strong opposition 
which her husband, the duke, made to the bond, which, by an 
act of privy council, August 2, 1677, all heritors, wood-setters, 
and life-renters, w r ere required to subscribe, engaging that neither 
they themselves, their wives, their children, their servants, nor 
their tenants, should assemble at conventicles, or afford encour- 
agement and protection to those Avho frequented them, or employ 
an}- outed minister in baptizing their children, and that under the 
highest penalties appointed by former laws, which are repeated 
in the proclamation. After recording the alarm which this bond 

* Wodrow's Analecta, vol. ii., p. 232 : and his History, vol. iv., p. 271. 
t Coltness Collections, p. 68. 



DUCHESS OF HAMILTON. 149 

created in the west, and giving an account of a meeting of noble- 
men, gentlemen, and heritors, in the shire of Ayr, against it, pre- 
sided over by the earl of Loudon, Kirkton adds : " The bond 
found no better reception in Clydesdale, where there was a great 
meeting of heritors at Hamilton ; and the duke of Hamilton being 
at this time highly displeased with the proceedings of the coun- 
cil, and a great enemy to the bond, knowing well that he could 
not answer for his own family, the bond was rejected even by 
those who were of no principle, but to save their estate."* 

This opposition, however, proved unavailing. It raised Lau- 
derdale's fury to such a pitch that, at the council table, he made 
made bare his arm above his elbow, and swore by Jehovah he 
would make the refractory landholders enter into it. For the 
purpose of coercing them he brought down upon the west of Scot- 
land, in 1678, a host of rapacious highlanders, to the number of 
not less than ten thousand.! Another species of oppression to 
which the gentlemen who refused to subscribe the bond were 
subjected, was the serving upon them a writ of lawborrows. The 
term lawborrows is from burgh or borrow, an old Scotch word for 
caution or surety, and means security given to do nothing con- 
trary to law. The import of a lawborrows in Scotland is, that 
when two neighbors are at such variance that the one dreads bod- 
ily harm from the other, he procures from the justiciary (former- 
ly from the council), or any other judges competent, letters char- 
ging the other to find caution or security that the complainer, his 
wife, bairns, &c, shall be scatheless from the person complained 
of, his wife, bairns, &c, in their body, lands, heritages, &c. ; but 
before such letters can be granted, the complainer must give his 
oath that he dreads bodily harm, trouble, or molestation from the 
person against whom he complains. The propriety of magistrates 
issuing such a writ in the case of private individuals may be ad- 
mitted ; but its being issued at the suit of the sovereign against 
his subjects, simply on account of their refusing an unreasonable 
bond, was the height of oppression.^ 

Yet, under the operation of this writ, the duchess of Hamilton 
was threatened to be brought ; and had Lauderdale succeeded in 
his wishes, she would have been subjected to its restraints and 
penalties ; for the duke of Hamilton had intimation sent him that 
it was designed to serve it upon him;|| in other words, that he 

* Kirkton's History, pp. 377, 378. 

t Burnet, in his " Own Times," says eight thousand (vol. ii , p. 134). Crook- 
shank, in his History? more correctly makes them ten thousand (vol. ii., p. 428). 
t Wodrovv's History, vol. ii., pp. 401, 403. Crookshank*s History, vol. i., p. 434. 
|| Burnet's History of his Own Times, vol. ii., p. 135. 

13* 



150 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

was to be obliged, according to the tenor of the act for serving 
lawborrows on the refusers of the bond, to enact himself in the 
books of the privy council, that he himself, the duchess, their 
children and their tenants, should keep his majesty's peace, and 
particularly that they should not go to field conventicles, nor 
harbor, nor commune with rebels or persons intercommuned, 
and that under the penalty of the double of his yearly valued 
rent, or such other penalties as should be thought convenient by 
the lords of the privy council or their committee.* Lauderdale, 
however, was compelled to abandon his intentions. The ravages 
of the highland host, and the enactment in reference to lawbor- 
rows, " which looked like French or rather like Turkish govern- 
ment," created universal indignation. The duke of Hamilton, 
and ten or twelve of the nobility, with about fifty gentlemen of 
quality, went up to London to complain, and the storm of oppo- 
sition became so violent that Lauderdale was glad to recall the 
highland host, and suspend the execution of writs of lawborrows. f 
Residing almost constantly at the palace of Hamilton, the 
duchess had full opportunity of learning the state of affairs in the 
district ; and she entered much into the feelings of the people in 
the distressing and turbulent times in which she lived. She es- 
pecially took a great interest in the welfare and comfort of her 
tenantry, and when, like others, thev were exposed to persecution 
and lawless violence, she was always prepared, according to her 
ability, to throw the shield of protection over them. In proof of 
this, we may refer to the manner in which she acted when, in 
1678, the highland host, now adverted to, was let loose, like an 
army of locusts, to lay waste the western parts of the country. 
The injury done by the host to her tenantry was considerable, 
though perhaps less than that suffered by many others. In the 
parish of Strathaven, of which she was chief proprietor, by an 
account taken up a considerable number of years after the revo- 
lution, from such sufferers as were then alive, there was lost, by 
free quarters and other extortions, the sum of .£1700 12.?. ; " and" 
as Wodrow remarks, " we may, without any stretch, double it, 
considering that many were dead in thirty years and more, after 
the highland host were among them." In the small parish of 
Cambuslang, one tenant had fifty highlanders of Atholl's men, 
with a lieutenant and quartermaster, quartered on him for eight 
days ; another had sixteen quartered on him, also for eight days ; 
and other three had each twenty-two quartered on him during 

* Wodrow's Historv. vol. ii.. p. 401. 

t Burnet's History of his Own Times, vol. ii , p. 135. 



1 



DUCHESS OF HAMILTON. 151 

the same period. In the return of the host from the more west- 
ern parts, one Lieutenant Stewart, and Quartermaster Leckie, 
came to that parish with eighteen men, continuing five weeks in it 
during seed-time ; and they told the parish that they had orders 
to quarter eighty men, though they never showed their order. 
No more than eighteen of their men ever came, but they exacted 
from the parish money equivalent to free quarters for eighty, 
which amounted to £861, and whoever refused to pay had their 
houses rifled, and were forced to buy back their goods at a much 
larger sum than the sum for quarters would have amounted to. 
The tenantry in Hamilton parish were also sufferers from the 
same cause. 

Indignant at these oppressions and hardships to which her 
tenants were subjected, the duchess instantly complained, and 
adopted measures for obtaining redress. Upon the 5th of April, 
she took an instrument against the earl of Strathmore, insisting 
for the restoration of what had been illegally exacted from her 
tenants, in the parish of Hamilton, by his soldiers. This instru- 
ment bears, that on the 5th of April, in presence of a public notary 
and witnesses, John Baillie, her chamberlain, went to Patrick, 
earl of Strathmore, who was for the time in the dwelling-house 
of William Hamilton, maltman, burgess of Hamilton, and there, 
in her name and behalf, showed the earl that neither she nor 
William duke of Hamilton, her husband, had ever seen any orders 
allowing any officers or soldiers in any troops or regiments for 
the time within the shire Lanark, to have free quarters upon any 
person or persons of whatever class : and that, notwithstanding 
thereof, a considerable part of the regiment of foot, under the 
command of the earl, sometimes more and sometimes fewer, had 
quartered upon her lands and property, within the parish of 
Hamilton, from the 16th day of March last bypast to this present 
day inclusive, without payment of any sums of money : as also, 
that the said soldiers had exacted diverse sums of money, or dry 
quarters (as they termed these exactions), from several of her 
tenants, and that over and above the entertainment of meat, drink, 
and bedding, they had in the places where they were quartered. 
For this reason, and in respect no order had been shown for free 
quarters, or levying of money, over and above the same, Mr. 
Baillie, in name and behalf, and at command of the duchess, 
desired the earl either to pay, or cause payment to be made, to 
her respective tenants, for the quarters his soldiers had upon her 
said tenants during the period of time above written ; and also 
that the said tenants might be reimbursed of all exactions made 



152 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

by his soldiers from them. To this it was answered by the earl, 
that the bringing such of his regiment into Hamilton parish was 
at the command of his majesty's privy council, founded upon his 
majesty's warrant ; that the way in which he had quartered them 
was conformably to orders from the major-general ; that he had 
never commanded or allowed any exactions of any kind besides 
their quarters ; and that such other exactions (if any were made), 
were expressly contrary to his orders. Upon which, this answer 
being judged unsatisfactory, Mr. Baillie, in name and at command 
of the duchess, as also the earl of Strathmore, took instruments 
in the hands of a notary.* Whether these tenants were reim- 
bursed for their losses does not appear. The probability is that 
they were not, but the representations made by the duchess, the 
duke and others in reference to the proceedings of the highland 
host so far succeeded, that these savages, after having ravaged 
the country for two months, were recalled. 

The duchess was residing at Hamilton palace when the cove- 
nanters, and the king's troops, under the command of the duke 
of Monmouth, fought at Bothwell bridge, on sabbath the 22d of 
June, 1679. The result of this unfortunate engagement is well 
known. The covenanters were defeated and put to flight. Few 
of them were slain in the encounter, but some hundreds were 
slaughtered in the most barbarous manner in the neighboring 
fields, whither they had lied. A great number of them sought 
for concealment in the wooded parks around Hamilton palace ; 
and here they found effectual shelter ; for the humane duchess, 
on being informed that many of the insurgents who had been 
defeated were lurking in her policies, and that the royal army 
was pursuing them, sent a message to the duke of Monmouth, 
desiring that he would prevent his soldiers from trespassing upon 
her grounds. With this request Monmouth, whose humanity in 
restraining the soldiers is deserving of commendation, instantly 
complied by giving orders to that effect ; and thus none of the 
fugitives who had taken refuge in her plantations were farther 
molested.f 

In addition to her humanity, the duchess possessed a nice 
sense of the honorable and just in spirit and in conduct. And as 
by such principles she herself was uniformly regulated, it afforded 
her much satisfaction to meet with them in others. Of this we 
have a fine illustration in an interesting correspondence which 

* Wodrow's History, vol. ;i , p. 430. 

t Chambers's Picture of Scotland, vol. i., p. 357. New Statistical Account of Scot- 
land, Hamilton, Lanarkshire, p. 206. 



DUCHESS OF HAMILTON. 153 

took place in 1687, between her and Thomas Rokeby, son of 
Major Rokeby, for whose use part of the estate of Hamilton had 
been sold in Cromwell's time. This gentleman writes to her, 
informing her that he was the ninth son of Major Rokeby ; that 
after much reflection with himself, he had come to the conclu- 
sion that Cromwell had no power to give away what was not his 
own ; that by his father's death, a tenth part of the price (two hun- 
dred and twenty- five pounds sterling) had come to him when a 
boy, which was the only part he had in the injury ; and that, hav- 
ing suffered many hard conflicts with himself on that account, he 
had resolved to make restitution, as the first step to forgiveness, 
first from God, and then from her grace. He wrote to her five 
letters on the subject. With these communications the duchess 
was much gratified, not indeed because she attached any impor- 
tance to the amount of his share of her spoils which he was so 
anxious to restore, but because of the indication they gave of a 
high sense of honor and a scrupulous regard to justice, which, in 
such matters, is not very common, and of which she probably 
never met, during her long life, with a similar instance. In her 
answers to his letters, she says little about the money, telling him 
that the duke took care of that ; but she expresses her admiration 
at his conduct, " falling almost before him as a votary," and ear- 
nestly desires an interest in the prayers of a person endowed in 
her estimation with such superior excellence of character. These 
letters are preserved among the state papers and other documents 
in the palace of Hamilton ; and Mr. George Chalmers, the well- 
known author of " Caledonia," who had read them, says, " The 
beautiful simplicity that runs through this correspondence can 
not be seen but in the letters themselves.'** 

Of the revolution which took place in 1688, the duchess was 
a warm friend, both because it delivered these nations from tyr- 
anny and popery, and restored the presbyterian church of Scot- 
land to her rights and liberties. Lockhart styles her " a stanch 
presbyterian, and hearty revolutioner."f Her zeal in the cause 
of the church was well known to King William, who delicately 
jested her on the subject ; as we learn from the following anec- 
dote, recorded by Wodrow. Writing, October 3, 1710, he says : 
" I hear that a little after the revolution, when this present duch- 
ess of Hamilton was coming down from court, and had taken her 
leave of the queen, and took leave of King William, he, smiling, 

* Descriptive Catalogue of the Hamilton Papers in the Miscellany of the Maitland 
Club, vol. iv, pp. 183, 184. 
t Lockhart's Papers, vol. i., p. 602. 



154 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

said, ' You are going down to take care of the kirk.' — 'Yes, sir,' 
she replied, ' I own myself a presbyterian,' and offered to kneel 
to kiss his hand. The king presently supported her, and, as I 
think, did not suffer her to kneel, but said, ' Madam, I am like- 
wise a presbyterian.' This I have from one that was witness to 
it, and another good hand that had it from the duchess."* 

The duke, her husband, was also a zealous supporter of the 
revolution government; but her son, the earl of Arran, devotedly 
adhered to James VII. He had been much courted by that mon- 
arch, who had conferred upon him various lucrative and honora- 
ble situations, such as the office of his majesty's lieutenant and 
sheriff in the shires of West Lothian, Lanark, Renfrew, and 
Dumbarton ; the office of groom of the stole, and first gentleman 
of the bedcKamber ; the office of colonel of a royal regiment of 
horse, and of brigadier-general of all the horse ; as well as the 
honor of a knight of the thistle. f Gained by these marks of 
royal favor, he supported James in opposition to the government 
of William ; and, having been engaged in a plot for the restora- 
tion of James, he was twice committed prisoner to the Tower of 
London, where he remained for many months, but was at length 
discharged without prosecution. While he lay in prison, the 
duchess, though disapproving of his conduct, naturally felt for 
her son, and wrote to the earl of Melville, interceding in his be- 
half, as she had often before interceded with men in high places, 
in behalf of those who had suffered in a better cause. The let- 
ter is as follows : — 

" My Lord : The receipt of vours of the 4th was a great sur- 
prise to me, to find, after so long a delay of that affair I com- 
mended so earnestly to your lordship, that there is so little done 
in it. I doubt not, but as you write, and as I am otherwise in- 
formed, the stop has not lain at your door, though there are who 
say it has, but 1 wish it were made evident who have been the ob- 
structors. I hope my son's peaceable behavior all this time will 
render his circumstances something more favorable than [those 
of] some others ; and, when his majesty considers the service 
his father has done, will move him to renew the same favor he 
granted before to my son, his liberty on bail, which will be re- 
ceived as a great favor to all concerned ; and if the ill condition 
of his health were known, it would plead compassion for him. 

" Wodrow'a Analecta, vol. i., p. 304. 

t Descriptive Catalogue of the Hamilton Papers in the Miscellany of the Maitland 
Club, voL iv., p. 183. 



1 



DUCHESS OF HAMILTON. 155 

But I have not time to add more, but my lord's humble service to 
you, and that I am, my lord, your lordship's most humble servant, 

" Hamilton. 
" Holyrood house, 19th December, 1690."* 

In the year 1706, when the question of the union of the king- 
doms of Scotland and England was so keenly agitated, the duch- 
ess was a very zealous opponent of the measure. The union 
was indeed in the highest degree unpopular among all parties. 
The cavaliers or Jacobites, perceiving that it would destroy all 
hopes of the restoration of the pretender, violently obstructed it 
in every stage of its progress. The presbyterians, too, whose 
opposition was much more formidable, opposed it, though from 
very different views, dreading that the consequence would be 
the supplanting of their favorite presbyterian church government, 
by the prelatic form established in England ; and so strong was 
this apprehension, that it could not be removed by all the offers 
made of security to the established presbyterian church. Burnet, 
who was then bishop of Salisbury, and a great courtier, says that 
these fears were " infused in them chiefly by the old duchess of 
Hamilton, who had great credit with them."f But this is per- 
haps ascribing to her grace a larger amount of weight in the 
church of Scotland than (notwithstanding the great respect en- 
tertained for her) she actually possessed. Altogether indepen- 
dent of her opinion or influence, the intrinsic importance of the 
question itself roused the attention of the presbyterians ; and they 
considered that good affection and zeal for the just rights and 
liberties, both of the nation and of the presbyterian government 
of the church of Scotland, as then by law established, bound them 
to oppose the union. The duchess, however, did all in her power 
to prevail on her friends to set themselves against it. Among 
the " Hamilton Papers" there are still preserved several letters 
she wrote to her son the duke, inciting him to oppose it as ruin- 
ous to his country, and steadfastly to concur with the duke of 
Atholl and those in the opposition.! Burnet states that " it was 
suggested that she and her son had particular views, as hoping 
that, if Scotland should continue a separate kingdom, the crown 
might come into their family, they being the next in blood after 
King James's posterity." || But such an insinuation is altogether 

* The Leven and Melville Papers, p. 587. 
t Burnet's History of his Own Times, vol. vi., p. 277. 

t Descriptive Catalogue of the Hamilton Papers in the Miscellany of the Maitland 
Club, vol. iv., p. 201. 
|| Burnet's History of his Own Times, vol. vi., p. 277. 



156 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

gratuitous. The love of country, and attachment to the doctrine 
and government of the church of Scotland, were the avowed rea- 
sons of her hostility to the union. That her motives were family 
considerations was the surmise of her enemies, which they could 
not support by a single word she had ever uttered or written, or 
by a single action she had ever performed. 

Upon the preaching of the gospel and the public ordinances 
of religion, the duchess set a high value. She attended with 
exemplary regularity public worship on the Lord's day ; and 
after the revolution, when the church was settled in a manner 
more consonant to her inclinations than before, she took a Chris- 
tian interest in the efficiency and success of the gospel ministry. 
To secure to the parishes where her influence extended, such 
probationers as, upon the best inquiry, were found to be accep- 
table to all ranks in the parish, was her great object. To the 
external comfort of the ministers of these as well as other par- 
ishes, she was ever ready to minister, and in other ways to 
encourage them in the faithful discharge of their pastoral duties. 
To provide more extensively the means of grace to the inhabi- 
tants of the district where she lived, and to the tenantry on her es- 
tate, was also her anxious desire. In testimony of this, she endowed 
a second minister in Hamilton, and another in Lesmahago.* She 
endowed a catechist, or preacher of the gospel, for Strathaven, 
who is always a licentiate of the church of Scotland, and assists 
the parish minister by visiting the sick, catechizing the parish, 
and preaching one half of the year. By her deed of mortifica- 
tion, dated 1st April, 1710, the annual income secured to him is 
five hundred merks, and his appointment is vested in the noble 
family of Hamilton.! To the stipend of the parish minister of 
Strathaven she added by mortification, the annual sum of five 
pounds, which is regularly paid by the duke of Hamilton.^ She 
mortified, 15th August, 1715, a piece of ground and a barn, for 
the use of the minister of Borrowstounness and his successors 

* Scots Magazine for 1773, pp. 5, 6. Chalmer's Caledonia, vol. iii., p. 723. The 
parish of Lesmahago was served by two ministers long before this period. The 
second minister was established a considerable time before the Restoration, but from 
what source his stipend was then paid does not appear. The writer in the Scots 
magazine, in recording the liberality of the duchess in endowing the second minis- 
ter in the parish of Lesmahago, adds : " This is but one instance I have mentioned 
of her piety and generosity. It would be impossible to enumerate them all. On 
this account her memory will be revered not only in Lesmahago, where she was so 
well known, but by all acquainted with her character, as long as a sense of virtue 
and religion remain in the world.'' 

t Descriptive Catalogue of the Hamilton Papers in the Miscellany of the Mart- 
land Club, vol. iv., p. 206. 

t New Statistical Account of Scotland, Lanarkshire, Avondale. 



DUCHESS OF HAMILTON. 157 

for ever.* She also mortified, 13th October, 1694, to the univer- 
sity of Glasgow, the sum of eighteen thousand merks for the 
use of three theologues, from time to time, to be presented by the 
family of Hamilton.! Besides these deeds of liberality, " she 
founded and endowed several schools, built bridges, and per- 
formed many acts of benevolence, which make her name to be 
revered in Clydesdale to this day."| 

We shall only advert to two other features of this lady's Chris- 
tian character. The one is, the sentiments of humility which 
pervaded her spirit in the house of God. In other places, and 
at other times, she was not unwilling to receive the honor due to 
her rank ; but there, seated in the presence of the Divine Majesty, 
to whom all the temporary distinctions of life are nothing, she 
wished to appear on the same footing with the poorest, feeling 
that she labored under the same necessities as a rational and an 
immortal being ; that she had equally merited God's wrath, and 
equally stood in need of his mercy. An instance of this pious 
humility which she cherished in the place of public worship is 
still preserved. At the stated times for the celebration of the 
Lord's supper, in the parish of Hamilton, she was a regular com- 
municant ; and on one of these occasions, when she was coming 
forward to the table of the Lord, a plain, decent, aged woman, 
who was just taking her seat at the table, on observing her, was 
about to step aside to give her the precedency ; but the duchess, 
unwilling to receive in that place such marks of attention and re- 
spect, prevented her, saying, " Step forward, honest woman, there 
is no distinction of ranks here."|| 

The other feature of her character worthy of special notice, 
is her pains-taking endeavors to train up her children in the nur- 
ture and admonition of the Lord. " There is nothing," as has 
been justly observed, " which presents the duchess's character in 
a more favorable light, and recommends her more for imitation, 
than the decided interest she took in the religious education of 
her own family. To overlook all concern about having religious 

* Descriptive Catalogue of the Hamilton Papers in the Miscellany of the Maitland 
Clnb, vol. iv., p. 206. t Ibid. 

$ Anderson's Memoirs of the House of Hamilton, p. 150. 

|| This anecdote is taken from a MS. volume, entitled " Memoirs of Catharine, 
Duchess of Atholl, in form of a Diary, Originally written by Herself. To which 
are prefixed Biographical Notices of the Duchess's Parents, William Third Duke, 
and Anne, Duchess of Hamilton ; Of her Husband, John, First Duke of Atholl, and 
of Duchess Catharine herself." By the late Rev. Mr. MoncriefF, minister of the 
united secession church in Hamilton. The notice of the duchess Anne is short, 
but interesting. I can not here omit expressing my obligations to the Rev. W. G-. 
MoncriefF, Musselburgh, who in the kindest manner favored me with a perusal of 
that work by his father, with full permission to make full use of its contents. 
14 



158 ■ THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

principles instilled into the minds of their children, has been often 
too common with those in conspicuous ranks, and their principal 
care has been to provide for them every facility of acouirm«r 
fashionable and polite accomplishments. A suitable care thai 
her family might not be without the accomplishments becoming 
their high rank in society, was not overlooked by her grace* 
But she also considered that it was a matter of the first, and of 
vital importance, that true religion should be understood, esteemed 
and diligently practised in her family. Her children were much 
under her eye, and had a great respect and affection for her es- 
pecially her daughter, Lady Catharine,* who became the wife 
of the duke of Atholl. There is every evidence, from the diary 
of Lady Catharine, that, besides other means of information and 
improvement to which she had access, the instructions and ex- 
ample of her esteemed mother were of great use, by the blessing 
of God in disposing her mind to that love of charity and reli- 
gion which took deep root in her heart, and to that faithful dis- 
charge of her duties as a wife, a parent, and a Christian, for 
which she was so distinguished."! 

The duchess lived to a very advanced age, retaining the pos- 
session of her mental faculties to the last; and exhibiting the 
most exemplary Christian patience under the infirmities of decli- 
ning years Mr. Robert Wylie, minister of Hamilton, in a letter 
to Bishop Burnet, her old friend, dated October 29 1714 says ■ 
' The good old duchess is still alive, entire in her judgment 'and 
senses, and laboring with a most exemplary patience and resig- 
nation under the infirmities of old age and frequent conflicts with 

WhiSTt™. T W l S V6I T nearIy tW ° ^ ears before her death ; 
7JZ i? f-r?« aCC at the P alace of Hamilton, on Wednesday, Oc- 
o.er 17, 1716, at six o'clock at night. The Scots Courant of 
that year, in recording her death, states that she was then in the 

T^LTa ^ ° f h6r uT ' addin S thal She " was a Pi°« -d 
virtuous ady and is much lamented." Her mortal remains were 
deposited beside those of her husband, father, and ancestors n 
the family burying-vault at Hamilton ' 

The particulars of her last illness have not been recorded • but 

SttTT I 1 " 7 Ch She ^ Spent a l0n § Hfe ' had bee » s»ch as 

donh IS t„ 6 , 1 P r Paratl T f ° r an ° ther WOrld ' and « c ™ »ot be 

t f oil I la r, er "^ WSS Peace - She came t0 Ae grave 

Men of ^Hf? T' \ " ES ' Sh ° Ck ° f COm COmeth in " s "ason 
Men of different and opposite political and religious creeds, have 

t Mr. Moncneffs Mb. J Wodrow's Correspondence, vol. I, p. 604. 



MRS. WILLTAM VEITCH. 159 

united in paying homage to her virtue, piety, and mental endow- 
ments. Bishop Burnet's testimony to these has already been 
quoted. Crawford describes her as " a lady who for constancy 
of mind, evenness of temper, solidity of judgment, and an unaf- 
fected piety, will leave a shining character, as well as example, to 
posterity, for her conduct as a wife, a mother, a mistress, and in 
all other conditions of life."* Lockhart, a violent Jacobite, char- 
acterizes her as " a lady of great honor and singular piety ."f 
And so high was the reputation for Christian excellence which 
she left behind her, that her memory was cherished with affec- 
tionate veneration long after her death, and even down to the 
present day, the " good duchess Anne" is the name by which 
she is familiarly known in the district where she commonly re- 
sided, and where her piety and benevolence were best known. 



MRS. WILLIAM VEITCH.J 

Marion Fairlie, the subject of this sketch, " who," as the 
editor of her diary well observes, " endured an amount of domes- 
tic affliction and vexatious persecution, in many cases more try- 
ing than martyrdom itself," was born in 1638, a year famous in 
the annals of the presbyterian church of Scotland. Her father 
was descended from the ancient family of the Fairlies, of the 
house of Braid, near Edinburgh, and was related to Lord Lee's 
first lady, who was of that house and name. Both her parents 
being eminent for piety were careful to instruct her in her tender 
years in the principles of divine truth, and to impress upon her 
mind the importance of the one thing needful. By the Divine 
blessing on these labors of parental love, together with the pas- 
toral instructions of an evangelical and faithful minister, Mr. 
Robert Birnie, of Lanark, she early acquired that deep sense of 
the things of God which she exemplified to the close of a long 
life. " It pleased God," says she, " of his great goodness, early 
to incline my heart to seek him, and bless him that I was born 
in a land where the gospel was at that time purely and power- 
fully preached ; as also, that I was born of godly parents and 
well educated. But above all things, I bless him that he made 

* Crawford's Peerage of Scotland, p. 212. f Lockhart's Papers, vol. i , p. 597. 
% This notice of Mrs. Veitch is drawn up chiefly from her own diary, and from 
the memoirs of Mr. V eitch, written by himself. 



160 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

me see that nothing but the righteousness of Christ could save 
me from the wrath of God." She adds, " one day having been 
at prayer, and coming into the room where one was reading a 
letter of Mr. Rutherford's (then only in manuscript), directed to 
one John Gordon, of Rosco, giving an account how far one might 
go, and yet prove a hypocrite and miss heaven, it occasioned 
great exercise to me.* Misbelief said I should go to hell ; but 
one day at prayer, the Lord was graciously pleased to set home 
upon my heart that word, ' To whom, Lord, shall we go? thou 
hast the words of eternal life' (John, vi. 68). And at another 
time, that word, ' Those that seek me early shall find me,' Prov. 
viii. 17." 

On the 23d of November, 1664, she was united in marriage to 
Mr. William Veitch, son of Mr. John Veitch, the nonconforming, 
ejected minister of Roberton. Mr. Veitch had been for some 
time previous, chaplain to Sir Hugh Campbell, of Calder, in Mo- 
rayshire, but was forced to leave that family about September 
that year ; for on the restoration of prelacy, none, according to 
an act of parliament, were permitted to be chaplains in families, 
to teach any public school, or to be tutors to the children of per- 
sons of quality, without the license of the bishop of the diocese ;f 
and Mr. Murdoch M'Kenzie, bishop of Moray, having, upon 
making inquiry, found Mr. Veitch's opinions hostile to prelaoy, 
would not suffer him to remain in that situation. He accordingly 
came south, and staying some time with his father, who, since 
his ejection, had taken up his residence at Lanark, became ac- 
quainted with the godly families of that place, among which was 
the family of the young lady whom he married. Several of her 
friends endeavored, but without effect, to dissuade her from the mar- 
riage, urging, among other reasons, the worldly straits to which, 
from the discouraging aspect of the times, she might be reduced. 
This at first occasioned her no inconsiderable anxiety of mind ; 
but she resolved to trust in God's promises for all needful tempo- 
ral good things, as well as for spiritual blessings. " And," says 
she, "these promises were remarkably made good to me in all 
the various places of my sojourning in diverse kingdoms, which 
I here mention to the commendation of his faithfulness. His 
word in this has been a tried word to me, Avorthy to be recorded, 
to encourage me to trust him for the future ; who heretofore has 
not only provided well for me and mine, but made me in the 
places where my lot was cast useful to others, and made that 

* See Rutherford's Letters, p. 552. Whyte and Kennedy's edition, 
t Wodrow's History, vol. i., p. 267. 



MRS. WILLIAM VEITCH. 161 

word good, ' As having nothing, and yet possessing all things,' 2 
Cor. vi., 10." 

Scarcely two years after her marriage, the storm of persecu- 
tion burst upon her and Mr. Veitch, separating them from each 
other, and ultimately forcing them to seek refuge in England. 
Mr. Veitch, who was a bold and daring man, was prevailed upon 
by Mr. John Welsh, minister of Irongray, and others who came 
to his house at the Westhills of Dunsyre, where he farmed a 
piece of land, to join with that party of the covenanters, who, 
provoked by the brutal cruelties and robberies of Sir James Tur- 
ner, rose in arms, and were defeated by the king's forces at 
Pentland hills.* This was the origin of the multiplied dangers 
and troubles to which he and Mrs. Veitch were subjected, by the 
government and its agents, during a series of many years. She 
seems to have had no scruples of conscience as to the propriety 
of the appeal which the covenanters, in this instance, made to 
arms : she at least wished them all success. On the night of 
the defeat, she was entertaining several of the officers who had 
fled to her house for shelter, and weeping lest her husband, of 
whose fate they could not inform her, should have been killed. 
On that same night, Mr. Veitch made his escape, and came to a 
herdsman's house in Dunsyre common, within a mile of his own 
house, giving the herdsman his horse to take home to his own 
stable, and desiring him to inform Mrs. Veitch of his safety. 
He lurked several nights thereabout, and at last retired into 
England. 

Two days after the battle, Mrs. Veitch was thrown into alarm 
by a party of Dalziel's troop, which that general, on learning 
where Mr. Veitch resided, had sent to the house to search for 
him ; but to her great comfort, he was not at home, and though 
in the immediate neighborhood escaped falling into their hands. 
It was also gratifying both to him and her, that the troopers did 
not get his fine horse, the man-servant having led him out to the 
moor ; for as it belonged to Lord Loudon, from whom the insur- 
gent covenanters had taken it, on account of his sending his offi- 
cer to warn all his tenants not to rise to their assistance, they 
were anxious to restore it to its rightful owner. On the following 
day, which was Saturday, Mr. Veitch having sent a man-servant 
down to Tweeddale, to see whether it might be safe to travel 
through that part of the country, Mrs. Veitch rode behind the 
man-servant, upon Lord Loudon's horse, to the house of Mr. Pat- 
rick Fleming, minister of Stobo, a nonconformist, and sent Mr. 

* The battle was fought on Wednesday, the 28th of November, 1666. 
14* 



162 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

Veitch word, according to his desire, by the man-servant, who 
was to return, that he might, to all appearance, with perfect 
safety, join her at the house of their friend, as she had observed 
no parties searching in that direction. On Mr. Veitch's arrival 
at Mr. Fleming's house, which was about midnight, it was judged 
safest for him immediately to leave it, and seek shelter else- 
where ; and Mrs. Veitch accompanied him on his journey it 
being now the sabbath morning, riding behind him on the same 
horse. They reached Glenvetches before day, and at ni^ht 
came to Torwoodle, the residence of Mr. George Pringle, who 
with his lady, a daughter of Brodie, of Lethin, in the north of 
Scotland, were ardently attached to the religion and liberty of 
their country, and whose house was a sanctuary to manv of the 
persecuted in those evil times. Leaving this' hospitable man- 
sion, they next proceeded to the house of Mr. Veitch's brother 
Mr. John, minister of Werstruther, in the shire of Berwick' 
Here having seen the printed proclamation for the apprehensmu 
of the leading whigs, in which his own name appeared, Mr 
Veitch deemed it prudent to secure his safety by fleeing into 
England, leaving behind him his wife and Lord Loudon's horse 
bhe rode on the horse to Edinburgh, where she delivered it to 
one of his lordship's friends, and then returned to her own family 
at the \\ esthills of Dunsyre. Meanwhile Mr. Veitch went to 
.Newcastle. 

Alter her return home, Mrs. Veitch was greatly molested with 
parties of troopers, who came to her house to search for her hus- 
band. On such occasions it was usual for a party of them to 
surround the house to prevent him, should he be Vithin, from 
making his escape by the windows, or anv concealed or back 
door, while another party went into the 'house and searched 
through every room and corner. Judging that there was more 
likelihood of his being at home during the night than during the 
day, they ordinarily paid their unwelcome visits in the nW 
when Mrs. Veitch and her children were in bed; and at what- 
ever hour they came, they rudely commanded her to rise and 
open the doors, threatening, that unless she did so quickly, they 
would force an entrance by breaking them up. But though often 
engaged in making these searches, and so intent upon their ob- 
ject as to secure the aid of a malignant laird and ladv in the 
neighborhood, who promised to inform them when he came home 
they never succeeded in finding him. Hearing of the harassing 
annoyances to which his wife was subjected; Mr. Veitch, dan- 
gerous as it was, came from Newcastle to see her and the chil- 



MRS. WILLIAM VEITCH. 163 

dren, and advised her to give up the farm and take up her resi- 
dence in Edinburgh, where he hoped she might be suffered to 
remain in quiet. Removing to Edinburgh, in compliance with 
his desire, she continued to live with her children in the capital 
for several years, during which time she was free from the trouble- 
some visiters who had rendered her so uncomfortable at the West- 
hills of Dunsyre. 

At length, about the year 1672, she and the children went to 
England to live with Mr. Veitch, who, after travelling from place 
to place, preaching the gospel to the English nonconformists, who 
had been deprived of their ministers by the act of uniformity, 
and by subsequent proceedings on the part of government, had 
been prevailed with by the people of Reedsdale, in Northumber- 
land, to give them the benefit of his stated ministry, and to bring 
his family thither. Before leaving Scotland she had given birth 
to four children. There two of them, a daughter and a son, had 
died and were buried. The other two, who were sons, William 
and Samuel, she took with her to England. In those days, when 
neither railways nor stagecoaches existed, it was the custom to 
convey children to a distance in creels upon horseback, and by 
this slow and inconvenient mode of travelling she brought her 
two boys by different stages from Edinburgh to the new place 
of their residence, which was a village called Falalies, within 
the parish of Rothbury, in Northumberland. Here Mr. Veitch, 
for the better support of his family, farmed a piece of ground, the 
salary he received as minister from the people, who were poor, 
being altogether inadequate for the maintenance of his family, 
and all that he had having been taken from him upon his forfeit- 
ure in life and fortune after the battle of Pentland hills, except 
a little which was unknown to his persecutors. After recording 
in her diary her removal from Scotland to England, Mrs. Veitch 
says : " Being deprived of what once I had in Scotland, I re- 
newed my suit to God for me and mine, and that was, that he 
would give us the tribe of Levi's inheritance, ' For the Lord God 
was their inheritance,' Josh. xiii. 33. When I entered into a 
strange land, I besought the Lord that he would give me food to 
eat and raiment to put on, and bring me back to set his glory in 
Scotland. This promise was exactly made out to me." 

She did not remain long in that place, having gone with Mr. 
Veitch to reside five miles farther in the country, where, besides 
preaching in a hall at Harnam, he farmed a piece of ground, and 
got as a residence for his family Harnamhall, the mansion of 
Major Babington, the representative of the Babingtons, a family 



164 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

whose antiquity in Britain is traced as far back as the Conquest. 
After continuing here four years, being again under the neces- 
sity of removing, the house and ground having fallen into the 
hands of a new proprietor, who refused to continue Mr. Yeitch 
as his tenant, she accompanied him to Stantonhall, in the parish 
of Longhorsly, in May, 1676 or 1677. That district, abounding 
Avith papists, and the incumbent of the parish, Mr. Thomas Bell, 
a Scotsman, being a violent persecutor, it was far from being a 
desirable place of residence for the family of a nonconforming 
presbyterian minister. Here Mrs. Veitch experienced no small 
trouble from the repeated attempts made to apprehend Mr. Veitch. 
At one time, on the second sabbath of August, 1678, about three 
o'clock in the afternoon, two justices of the peace, on the simple 
information of a single individual, seconded by the threatenings 
and persuasion of Mr. Bell, came with some men to apprehend 
him at a meeting in his own house. One of the justices, with 
his party, came to the front gates, while the other, with his party, 
appeared at the back gate. They rudely broke into the house, 
and searched through it with pistols in their hands. Baffled in 
their attempts to find Mr. Veitch, who concealed himself within 
the lining of a large Avindow, which had been made for that pur- 
pose, they at last went away, after having advised Mrs. Veitch 
to allow her husband to preach only to herself and her children, 
in which case they assured her she should not be troubled. 

Another attempt, made some time after, to apprehend him, 
proving successful, became to her a source of greater trouble. 
On sabbath, the 19th of January, 1679, Major Oglethorp, with a 
party of his dragoons from Morpeth, arrived at her house, which 
was three or four miles distant from Morpeth, about five o'clock 
in the morning, while the family were fast asleep. One Cleugh, 
a sheriff-bailiff, whom Oglethorp (who was a stranger in the 
countrv) had hired as his guide, on reaching the house, went to 
the window of the parlor where x\Ir. and Mrs. Veitch were sleep- 
ing, and rapping on the glass of the window, repeatedly called 
out the name of Mr. Veitch, who, awaking, asked who was there. 
On hearing him speak, Cleugh said to the major, who was stand- 
ing beside him, " Now, yonder he is : I have no more to do." 
Oglethorp, thus understanding that the object of his search was 
in the house, instantly broke in pieces the glass window, in or- 
der to get in ; but finding iron bars in his way, he demanded that 
the door should be immediately opened ; and, impatient of delay, 
he and his dragoons broke in at the hall-windows, and getting 
their candles lighted before the servant-maid opened the inner 



MRS. WILLIAM VEITCH. 165 

doors, they apprehended Mr. Veitch, and carried him to Morpeth 
jail, where he continued prisoner twelve days. 

During the time that this scene was enacting, Mrs. Veitch, 
though not free from alarm, yet persuaded that men could do 
nothing against her and her husband but what God permitted, 
conducted herself with a degree of composure which even sur- 
prised the rude and heartless military. In relating the scene, 
she says : " It bred some trouble and new fear to my spirit ; but 
He was graciously pleased to set home that word, ' He does all 
things well,' Mark vii. 37 ; ' Trust in the Lord, and fear not what 
man can do,' Ps. lvi. 11 ; which brought peace to me in such a 
measure, that I was made often to wonder ; for all the time the 
officers were in the house He supported me, so that I was not in 
the least discouraged before them, which made Major Oglethorp 
say he wondered to see me. I told him I looked to a higher 
hand than his in this, and I knew he could not go one hair 
breadth beyond God's permission. He answered that He per- 
mits his enemies to go a great length sometimes. They took him 
to prison, where he lay about twelve days." 

During that period of Mr. Veitch's imprisonment Mrs. Veitch 
was deeply afflicted in spirit, for which she had indeed too much 
reason, her prospects being very dark and distressing. She had 
no ground to hope that he would be soon released. She had, on 
the contrary, much cause to fear that he would share the fate of 
those who had been put to death for the Pentland insurrection ; 
for he was regarded by the government as a traitor of the deepest 
dye : sentence of death had been pronounced against him in his 
absence for high-treason,* and he was excluded by name from 
the king's pardon and indemnityf — all which augured ill for his 
future safety. Besides, she had now six helpless children, en- 
tirely dependent upon herself, with no apparent means of provi- 
ding for their temporal necessities. But though sunk in sorrow 
in such trying circumstances, she was not overwhelmed with 
despair. Betaking herself to the throne of grace, where the 
afflicted have so often found relief, and reposing in the gracious 
promises of God's word, she was enabled to acquiesce in the 
Divine will, even though her husband should fall a sacrifice to 
the fury of persecution, and though she herself, with her father- 
less children, should be cast destitute upon the world. " All the 
twelve days of his imprisonment," she says, " I was under much 
exercise of spirit, which made me go to God many times on his 
behalf. He made that word often sweet to me, ' He performeth 
* On the 16th of August, 1667. t Dated October 1, 1667. 



166 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

the things appointed for me,' Job xxiii. 14 ; and that, ' He is of 
one mind, and who can turn him V verse 13. Much means were 
used for his liberty, but all to no effect, which bred new errands 
to God for him and me. But misbelief coming in and telling 
many ill tales of God, was like to discourage me ; to wit, that I 
was a stranger in a strange land, and had six small children, and 
little in the world to look to. But He comforted me with these 
words : — 

' O why art than cast down, my soul — 

W hat should discouraee thee ? 
And why with vexing thoughts art thou 

Disquieted in me ? 
Still trust in God ; for him to praise 

Good cause I yet shall have : 
He of my count'nauce is the health, 

My God that doth me save.'— Ps. xliii. 5. 

" At length He helped me to give him freely to Him, to do 
with him as He pleased ; and if his blood should fill up the cup 
of the enemy, and bring about deliverance to His church, I would 
betake myself to His care and providence for me and my chil- 
dren." She adds, as if her faith had stayed the fury of the per- 
secutor, and arrested his cruel purpose : " And while I was yet 
speaking to God in prayer, that word was wonderfully brought 
into my mind, ' Abraham, hold thy hand, for I have provided a 
sacrifice' (Gen. xxii. 11, 12), which comforted me concerning 
my husband ; and that word, ' The meal in the barrel shall not 
waste, nor the oil in the cruise, until the Lord send rain on the 
earth' (1 Kings xvii. 14), which brought much peace to my 
troubled spirit concerning my troubled family. I thought I had 
now ground to believe he should not die ; but misbelief soon got 
the upper hand, and told me it was not the language of faith, 
which put me to go to God, and pour out my spirit before him. 
And He answered me with that word, ' They that walk in dark- 
ness and have no light, let them trust in the Lord, and stay them- 
selves on their God!' (Isaiah 1. 10), which refreshed me much, 
and gave me more ground to believe my husband should not die." 
While Mr. Veitch was lying in Morpeth jail, she received a 
letter from him, written on the evening of the eleventh day of his 
imprisonment, informing her that an order having been despatched 
from the king and English council to transport him to Scotland, 
there to suffer for alleged misdemeanors, he was to be removed 
from Morpeth for Scotland on the morrow, and requesting her 
immediately to come and see him. " When I opened the letter," 
she says, " he had that expression, ' Deep calleth unto deep,' &c. 



MRS. WILLIAM VEITCH. 167 

But He [God] was pleased to send home that word, ' Good is 
the word of the Lord,' which silenced much my misbelief." On 
receiving the letter, she proceeded without delay to Morpeth, 
riding, along with a man-servant, through a deep storm of snow, 
and arrived at an inn in Morpeth after midnight. Not being 
allowed access to her husband till the morning, she sat, during 
the remainder of the night, at the fireside ; and when admitted to 
him, she could not. speak to him but in the presence of a guard 
of soldiers, who were that night placed in the room to watch him, 
lest he should make his escape. Nor had she been long with 
him, when, the kettle-drums beating the troops presently to arms, 
he was separated from her, and being carried out to the streets, 
was set on horseback, in the midst of the soldiers (the town's 
people, from curiosity, running to gaze), and brought to Alnwick, 
thence to Belford, thence to Berwick, and after being kept there 
for some time, was carried to Edinburgh, where he was thrown 
into prison. "All these things," says she, " were against me, 
and conspired to frighten me ; but that word, being set home, 
wonderfully supported me, ' Fear thou not the fear of man, but 
let the Lord be your fear and your dread' (Isaiah viii. 12, 13). I 
went after to a friend's house in the town, and wept my fill, and 
some friends with me. He desired that a day might be kept [for 
offering up prayers in his behalf], which was done in several 
places of the country. I went home to my children, having one 
upon the breast. I was under much exercise about him, and it 
was my suit to Him who, I can say, is a present help in the time 
of trouble, that he might be kept from the evil of sin ; which He 
was graciously pleased to answer." The concluding sentence 
of this quotation, though very humbly and unostentatiously ex- 
pressed, breathes a spirit of noble Christian fortitude — the holy 
heroism of the martyr. So strong was her sense of the para- 
mount claims of duty, that to witness her husband undergoing his 
present hardships, and even crueller treatment, however painful 
to natural affection, was less painful to her than would have been 
the sight of his doing, from motives of worldly ease, aught which 
God and conscience would condemn. 

As a farther aggravation of the distressing circumstances into 
which she and her children were at this time reduced, it may be 
added that, being conducted to Edinburgh jail at his own expense, 
Mr. Veitch was under the necessity of selling his stock for 
money to bear his charges, and, " by so doing, to lay his farm 
lea, rendering it presently useless to his family, yea, so disabled, 
as the way-going crop was lost, in which sad posture he left them : 



168 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

the children young, insensible of the matter, and unfit to do for 
themselves, so that the whole burden was laid on the mother." 

To the extracts made from Mrs. Veitch's diary during this pe- 
riod of trial, we may add the interesting record left by Mr. Veitch, 
of her distressful feelings and her faith in God under it, which 
proves that she was, as he expresses it, " a meet helper for him 
indeed, in this very case." " Trouble and anguish," says he, 
" did now compass her about in this darkest hour of her twelve 
years' night of affliction. Her soul melteth for heaviness and 
grief; she is now in deep waters in a foreign land, far from her 
relations, friends, and acquaintances ; distress and desolation at 
home, and destruction and death abroad ; the sad report whereof, 
with trembling, she expects every day, because of the fury of the 
oppressor. This puts her on a most serious exercise, and firm 
resolution to take God for all. He should be the husband, and 
he should be the farm ; he should be the stock and the crop ; he 
should be the provider, the food, and the raiment, the master of 
the family, and the father of the children ; yea, she resolved to 
cleave faster unto this relation than Ruth did to Naomi, for that 
which parted them should bring her to the greatest nearness, 
most inseparable and comfortable communion with her God. 
Thus, while deep called unto deep, she held by her compass, and 
followed the precedents of the word. Her prayer was in this 
ni»ht to the God of her life, and Jacob-like, she gave it not over 
till she got a new lease of her husband's life granted her ; which, 
when she obtained, she wrote an encouraging letter to him at 
Berwick (the weaning of her child Sarah not suffering her yet 
to visit him), telling him that he should be like Isaac, with the 
knife at his throat, near to death ; but the Lord would find a sac- 
rifice, and the enemy should be restrained. She wished him 
also not to be anxious about his family, for the meal and the oil, 
little as it was, should not fail ; not only till he returned, but also 
the kingdom to Israel. These instances, so clearly and convin- 
cingly borne in upon her, gave her good ground to say with the 
psalmist, ' Thy word is my comfort in all my afflictions ;' her 
prayers and pleadings were turned to praises, and his statutes 
were her ' songs in the house of her pilgrimage,' and she was 
persuaded that her night would yet have a day succeeding 
it, wherein he would, as a special favor to her and her family, 
command his loving kindness." 

Under all her sufferings, Mrs. Veitch uniformly speaks in a 
chastened and subdued tone of those by whom they were inflict- 
ed ; nor did she yield to that bitterness and exultation of spirit 



MRS. WILLIAM VEITCH. 169 

which the human heart is so naturally inclined to cherish, at wit- 
nessing or hearing of the calamities or judgments which may- 
light on an enemy. Within five days after Mr. Veitch's trans- 
portation from Morpeth to Edinburgh, one of the most virident 
of his persecutors, Mr. Bell, formerly referred to,* met with his 
death in very appalling circumstances. On returning home from 
Newcastle, he stopped at Pontilland, and continued drinking 
there with the curate till about ten o'clock at night, when he de- 
termined to go home. The curate urged him, as the night was 
dark and stormy, and the river Pont, which he had to cross, was 
much swollen, to remain till to-morrow ; and, to detain him, took 
his watch from him, and locked up his horse in the stable. But, 
as if impelled by some unseen power to his fate, he would not be 
persuaded, and, getting his horse, proceeded on his journey. 
Two days after he was found standing dead up tb the arm-pits in 
the river Pont, near the side, the violence of the frost having fro- 
zen him in. His hat and gloves were on, and his boots and 
gloves were much worn from his struggles among the ice to get 
out. Mrs. Veitch's reflections on this awful visitation are Chris- 
tian and becoming : " The whole country about was astonished 
at that dispensation, and often said to me there would none trou- 
ble my husband again, for they all knew that he was an enemy to 
my husband. I told them they that would not take warning from 
the word of God, would never take warning from that. That 
scripture was often borne in upon my spirit, ' Rejoice not at the 
fall of thine enemy, lest He see it, and be displeased.' " She 
adds, " I bless the Lord I was not in the least lifted up with it ; 
for his word was my counsellor ; in all my doubts and fears it 
was as refreshing to me as ever meat and drink were. There 
are none that study to make the work of God the rule of their 
walk, and when grace is master of the house, but they will say, 
as David said when Shimei railed on him, ' Let him alone, God 
hath bidden him, who knows but he will requite blessings for 
cursings V But when corrupt nature is master, it will say, ' Cut 
off the head of the dog ;' but I am much in grace's debt ; that 
kept me back from being of Shimei's frame." In reference to 
another case of ill treatment received, she makes similar re- 
marks, " I bless the Lord who kept me from being of a revenge- 
ful spirit. Whatever I met with from the creature, he helped 
me always to look to God. That was often upon my spirit which 

* When Mr. Veitch was removed from Morpeth for Edinburgh. Bell said, " This 
night he will be at Edinburgh, and hanged to-morrow, according to his demerits; 
and how could such a rebel as he, who did so and bo, expect to escape the just judg- 
ment of God I" 

15 



170 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

David said, ' Let him alone, God hath bidden him,' and that word 
in the Psalms, ' Fret not thyself, because of evil-doers.' " 

About the close of February, or the beginning of March, 1679, 
a month after Mr. Veitch was carried from Morpeth to Scotland, 
and when he was lying a prisoner in tbe tolbooth of Edinburgh, 
she set out, with a heavy heart, for Edinburgh, through a great 
storm of snow, in compliance with a letter she received from 
him, leaving her children behind her. On reaching the capital, 
she was much relieved on finding that there was every prospect 
of his being set at liberty. But within a few days he was put 
in close prison, and an order came from the king to hand him 
over to the justiciary court, that intimation might be made to him 
of the sentence of death for high treason, which had been pro- 
nounced against him in his absence nearly twelve years before. 
This threw her into a state of great agitation of mind. Provi- 
dence now seemed to contradict the assurance she thought she 
had received from God, that Mr. Veitch's life would be preserved. 
But by faith and prayer, her usual refuge in the hour of trial, her 
fears were gradually allayed, and she became settled in her pre- 
viously cherished hope, that matters would be so ordered as to 
secure his personal safety. Nor were her hopes disappointed. 
About the close of July, Mr. Veitch was liberated, by virtue of 
the king's pardon, indulgence, and indemnity. " When the news 
came to my ears,*' says she, " that word came in my mind, ' He 
hath both spoken it, and himself hath done it ; I will walk softly in 
the bitterness of my spirit all my days,' Isa, xxxviii. 15." She 
adds, " We came both home in peace to our children, where we 
lived at Stantonhall, three miles from Morpeth, in Northumber- 
land, August, 1679."* This sore trial had now come to an end, 
but it did not leave them in outward circumstances equallv favor- 
able with those in which it found them, having involved them in 
a heavy debt. Owing to the forfeiture of Mr. Veitch, and to 
their repeated removals from one place to another, occasioned by 
the prelates and their emissaries, they were unable to defray the 
expenses incurred in this business without borrowing considera- 
ble sums of money from their friends. 

In addition to her other virtues, Mrs. Veitch was distinguished 
for kind-hearted hospitality. In those distressing times, when 
oppression compelled our presbyterian ancestors to " wander in 
deserts and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth," 
her house, both during the period of her residence in Scotland 
and in England, " was a resting and refreshing place for the wan- 
* Memoirs of Mrs. Veitch, p. 6. She says 1680, by mistake. 



MRS. WILLIAM VEITCH. 171 

dering and weather-beaten flock of Christ." The same woman- 
ly and Christian kindness, which prompted her cordially to re- 
ceive into her house the officers of the covenanters after their 
defeat at Pentland hills, and to set meat and drink before them, 
led her cordially to welcome, and kindly to entertain those friends 
and acquaintances who, when hunted like wild beasts by their 
persecutors, sought refreshment and a hiding-place under her 
roof; and it was her observation " that things never came in so 
plentifully, nor went so far, as when they had most strangers." 

Among those who betook themselves for shelter to her hospi- 
table dwelling was the earl of Argyll, who suffered in 1685. At 
the close of December, 1681, that nobleman, having, on the 20th 
of that month, escaped from the castle of Edinburgh, where he 
lay imprisoned under sentence of death, directed his course to 
Stantonhall, with the view of being conducted on his way to Lon- 
don by Mr. Veitch, whose intrepidity, shrewdness, and fidelity, 
particularly recommended him for such a service. On Argyll's 
arrival, Mr. Veitch being from home, Mrs. Veitch sent some of 
her servants or friends about the country for two days in search 
of him ; and on his return, she consented to allow him to do his 
best in conducting their respected noble friend in safety to London. 

Some weeks after Mr. Veitch's arrival in the English capital, 
she received a letter from him, informing her that he had some 
thoughts of emigrating to Carolina, a scheme of planting a Scot- 
tish colony there having been formed by Sir John Cochrane and 
several others ; that he had the prospect of good encouragement 
in a temporal respect, as well as of enjoying without disturb- 
ance that civil and religious freedom which was denied them 
in their native land ; and that she might be making prepara- 
tions for leaving Scotland. To this proposal she at first felt a 
strong disinclination. Driven though she was from place to 
place, and exposed to many annoyances and hardships, yet to 
leave the land of her fathers at her advanced period of life — for 
she was now in the forty-fourth year of her age — and more es- 
pecially to leave a land which, like Judea to the Jews, was en- 
deared to her by the most, sacred associations — which God had 
honored by taking into covenant with himself, and to encounter 
the perils of the ocean, and all the dangers and difficulties attend- 
ing a new settlement in the forests of America, was a step to 
which she was averse from sentiments of patriotism as well as 
from natural feeling. But, submitting her will to the will of God, 
she at last became less disinclined, and stood prepared to go 
wherever he in his providence might call her. " I thought," 



172 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

says she, " in my old days I could have no heart for such a voyage, 
and leave these covenanted lands ; but at length I got submis- 
sion to my God and was content, if he had more service for me 
and mine in another land ; for I had opened my mouth and given 
me and mine to him and his service when and where, and what 
way he pleased, and I could not go back ; but if I went there, I 
would hang my harp upon the willows when I remembered Scot- 
land." Obstacles were however, thrown in the way of this plan- 
tation, so that it was never formed ; and she had the pleasure of 
seeing Mr. Veitch return home, after an absence of about half a year. 
But her troubles were not yet brought to a termination. A 
discovery of the Ryehouse plot, in which Mr. Veitch had been 
concerned when in London, having been made,* a justice of the 
peace came to the house to apprehend him. He narrowly es- 
caped, and, after hiding himself for some weeks, succeeded in 
getting over to Holland. At this time Mrs. Veitch fell sick, but 
was not long in recovering. To complete the education of her 
two eldest sons, she sent them over to their father in Holland. 
While at sea they encountered a severe storm, by which many 
lives were lost, but they got safely to land, though with much 
difficulty. Meanwhile she was deprived, by death, of her third 
son, a boy of twelve years of age. Her sorrow under this be- 
reavement, though aggravated by the absence of his father, was 
mitigated from the striking evidence afforded by the dying child, 
that he died in the Lord. Previously thoughtless, and without 
any appearance of religion, he seemed to her, even sometime 
after his illness commenced, not to be duly impressed with the 
awful importance of death and eternity. Anxious and trembling 
for the safety of his soul, she was earnest in prayer that God 
would wean his young and tender heart from the world, open his 
eyes to see the glories of heaven, and discover to him his inter- 
est in the Savior. Her prayers were heard. One day, calling 
her to his bedside, he told her that the world to him had lost its 
attractions, and that he was resigned to die. She asked the rea- 
son of this, since he had formerly felt a desire to live. He an- 
swered that he had been praying and giving himself to Christ ; 
that Christ had assured him of the delight he took in his soul ; 
and that this had comforted him. Afterward he said, " Is it not 
a wonder that Jesus Christ should have died for sinners ? Oh, 
this is a good tale, and we should think often on it !" He fre- 
quently repeated these words, " Whom have I in heaven but 
thee 1 and there is none upon the earth that I desire beside thee !" 

* It was discovered in June, 1683. 



MRS. WILLIAM VEITCH. 173 

" which," says Mrs. Veitch, " refreshed me more than if he had 
been made heir of a great estate." When engaged in prayer a 
little before he died, hejprayed for his absent father and brothers, 
pleaded that his brothers and sisters might be animated to serve 
God in their generation, and used these words, " Though we be 
far separated now, I hope we shall meet in glory." Also calling 
for his brother who was at home, and his sisters, he blessed 
them all, and bade them farewell. On becoming unable to speak, 
he held up his hand while his mother spoke to him of death and 
heaven. At last he put up his own hand and closed his own eyes, 
" and so," says she, " we parted in hope of a glorious meeting." 

The deep anxiety which Mrs. Veitch felt for the spiritual wel- 
fare of her children, is an interesting and instructive feature of 
her character. Nor was this anxiety limited to those seasons 
when sickness entered her dwelling, and threatened to remove 
by death the objects of her tenderest affection. As became 
a Christian mother, the spiritual interests of her children 
were to her a source of constant solicitude. Before they 
were born she devoted them to God, and she renewed the 
dedication at their baptism. She early instructed them in 
the things of God, and often recommended them to him by 
prayer. It was her highest ambition to see them lndng the life 
of the righteous, and to engage them to such a life, she plied 
them with arguments addressed both to their hopes and their 
fears, to their understandings and their hearts. " When I was 
pouring out my spirit before Him in prayer," she says, in one 
part of her diary, " He brought that word wonderfully to my 
mind, where the angel appeared to Cornelius (Acts x.) and bade 
him send for Peter, who would tell him words by which he and 
all his house should be saved. He opened mine eyes and let 
me see that which I had never seen before so clearly — that 

Christ's death and blood could reach a whole family This 

gave me new ground to plead the promise for me and mine, and 
that the sign I sought from him might be accomplished, that they 
might evidence by their practice they were his, and my eyes 
might see it." In another part of the same document, she further 
says, " I charge all mine, as they shall answer to God at the 
great day, and as they would not have me to be a witness against 
them in that day, that ye covenant yourselves away to God and 
his service, and plead the good of this promise* in particular, 

* The promise she refers to is, " I will be your God, and the God of your seed," 
which she bad been pleading with God, and which, by his grace, he had enabled 
her to embrace. 

15* 



174 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

every one of you for yourselves ; for all I can do for you can not 
merit heaven for you : for with the heart man believes, and every 
man is saved by his own faith. All my desire is, that he would 
glorify himself by redeeming me and mine from hell and wrath, 
and make us useful in our generation for his glory. I thought lit 
to write this for my own use and the good of mine ; and, if the 
Lord should take me from them by death, I hope the words of a 
dying mother shall have some weight upon their spirits." 

* During the time of Mr. Yeitch's stay in Holland, the entries 
in Mrs. Veitch's diary relate chiefly to her anxiety about him, 
and to her distress of mind on account of the condition of the 
church in Scotland, whose sufferings seem to have more deeply 
affected her heart than even her own personal afflictions. After 
relating some news she heard from Scotland, and her exercise 
thereupon, she adds : " Within, a little misbelief got the mastery 
of me, and it told me that I need not expect to see good days. 
This was occasioned by the apostasy of some, and the persecutors 
being permitted to run all down before them, as it were. I could 
sleep little or none for several nights." When recording the 
death of Charles II., she writes as follows : " When I heard it, 
I thought Pharaoh was dead, and I would go to God and beg of 
him that he would spirit a Moses to lead forth the church from 
under her hard bondage ;" and, after referring to some passages 
of scripture which were impressed upon her mind, she observes 
that she was thereby made to " hope that God would not leave 
these covenanted lands, especially Scotland." 

Meanwhile, a considerable number of English and Scottish 
refugees in Holland, encouraged by friends both in England and 
Scotland, were forming a scheme for overthrowing by force the 
government of James VII., who was resolutely bent on establish- 
ing absolute power in the state and popery in the church. The 
duke of Monmouth was to invade England, and the earl of Argyll, 
Scotland. The scheme being matured, Mr. Veitch, who was 
one of the party, was sent from Holland to Northumberland and 
the Scottish borders, to give their friends information of their 
intentions; in doing which, the matter, through his activity in 
travelling from place to place, and through the zeal of numbers in 
many quarters to rise, was in danger of being divulged, so that he 
he was forced to retire to the mountains, in the borders near Reeds- 
dale-head, and hide himself, nor did he deem it safe to go to New- 
castle, whither his wife had removed in 1684, till some time after 
the execution of the earl of Argyll and the duke of Monmouth.* 

* The earl of Argyll was taken on the 17th of Jane, 1685, and executed on the 



MRS. WILLIAM VEITCH. 175 

On the arrival of Argyll in Scotland, and of Monmouth in Eng- 
land, Mrs. Veitch hoped that, perhaps, the time had now come 
for the deliverance of the church, and that these noblemen might 
be the appointed and honored instruments of effecting it ; but, that 
ill-conducted undertaking proving unsuccessful, these agreeable 
expectations were not realized, and she felt in some measure 
dispirited. " It was my desire," she says, " that He would make 
good his word, on which he had caused me to hope in behalf of 
the church ; for I thought, possibly this might be the time of build- 
ing his house. But his thoughts are not like mine ; for it pleased 
Him who gives no account of his matters, to let both these great 
persons fall before the enemy, which put me to pour out my spirit 
before Him, and often to charge my soul to be silent, for my ill 
heart and misbelief were like to quarrel with him."' The ten- 
dency to quarrel with God, which she expresses herself as feeling 
at the disastrous issue of this attempt, need occasion little sur- 
prise ; for although the enlightened friend of freedom will not 
now regret that such was its issue, providence having, not long 
after, without struggle or bloodshed, brought about a more effec- 
tual and permanent deliverance than could have been expected 
by its success ; yet, at that time, the defeat of the enterprise was 
in no small degree discouraging to many of the covenanters, as 
it seemed to demonstrate the hopelessness of any efforts to throw 
off that oppressive yoke, under which their powers of endurance 
were well nigh exhausted, and even threatened to rivet the chains 
of. slavery and popery more firmly on Britain than ever. 

Still she never despaired of the deliverance of the church and 
nation, and even cherished the hope of living to see it accom- 
plished. On one occasion after the fatal result of this insurrec- 
tion, at a social meeting for prayer and conference held in her 
house at Newcastle, where, besides her husband, there were 
present some of his pious Scottish relations, and also some other 
good people of the town of Newcastle, after several had spoken 
in an almost despairing tone of the state of matters, she expressed 
her confident hope that good days were still awaiting Scotland. 
She said that the night was indeed dark, and that all things wore a 
dismal aspect, but that she was, notwithstanding, persuaded that 
God would not leave his own work, but from an unexpected 
quarter would raise up instruments to build his house, to restore 
the ark and the glory, and bring home his captives. She added, 
moreover, that she felt assured she would see presbytery estab- 

30th of that month. The duke of Monmouth was taken on the 8th of July, 1685. 
and executed on the 15th of that month. 



176 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

lished, and her husband a settled minister in the church of Scot- 
land, before she died. " Though they loved the thing," Bays .Mr. 
Veitch, " yet they little believed it in the time ; but when it came 
to pass, they both thought and talked much of it." From the 
danger he was in of being apprehended, Mr. Veitch only visited 
her occasionally from the time he came from Holland, early in 
1685, till his settlement as a minister at Beverley, near one hun- 
dred miles south from Newcastle, after King James's declaration 
for liberty of conscience in England, when, with her family, she 
removed to that part of the country. 

When Mr. Veitch was called to Beverley, she felt some re- 
luctance to settle in that place, from the strong desire she had to 
see the restoration of the church to prosperity in the land of her 
birth, and that her husband might in some degree be instrumental 
in promoting it there ; though, at last, she submitted her inclina- 
tions to the determinations of Providence, if he could be more 
useful in that place than in another. But when, after having 
preached for six or seven months in Beverley, with much suc- 
cess, he received pressing invitations to return to Scotland, 
where King James's toleration had been accepted, she was ex- 
tremely desirous that he should comply with these invitations, 
though the people of Beverley had sent for her, given her good 
offers, and used many arguments to persuade her and him to 
stay with them. " Her heart," says Mr. Veitch, " was for her 
native country, and she longed to see that in the performance 
which she had promised herself formerly in her duties and wrest- 
ling with God, and had expressed her assurance thereof." She, 
however, apprehended that the design in view, in the toleration 
extended to Scotland, as well as in that granted to England, was 
under the disguise of benefiting dissenters, to afford relief to 
papists, and ultimately to pave the way for the establishment of 
popery. " Considering it came from a popish king," she writes, 
" made me fear what the issue might be." 

On the compliance of Mr. Veitch with a call he received from 
the united parishes of Oxnam, Crailing, Eckford, Linton, More- 
battle, and Hownam, to preach to them, under King James's third 
indulgence, at Whittonhall, which was almost the centre of these 
parishes,* she returned with great joy to |jer native land. " But," 
says she, " His promise to me for His church in Scotland, was 
not yet altogether performed. I was like Haman (Esther v. 13), 
all availed me little so long as I saw popery owned by authority. 
I thought that then the ark was still in the house of Obededom ; 

* He entered on this charge iu April, 1G9*. 



MRS. WILLIAM VEITCH. 177 

it was my desire He would spirit some to bring it to Jerusalem." 
She had not, however, been much more than half a year in Scot- 
land, when James VII., was driven from his throne, and William, 
prince of Orange, was called to fill it, a revolution which, by more 
narrowly circumsci'ibing and more exactly defining the preroga- 
tives of the crown than had been done in any former period of 
the history of our country, conferred on the subjects a degree of 
liberty they never before had enjoyed, defeated the design of 
restoring popery, overthrew prelacy in Scotland, and brought to 
a termination the sufferings of the presbyterians for conscience' 
sake. 

After the revolution she resided first in Peebles, and next in 
Dumfries, in which places Mr. Veitch was successively minister. 
In the last of these towns she died in May, 1722, at the advanced 
age of eighty-four. Mr. Veitch died on the day after her death, 
having completed his eighty-second year. Mr. James Guthrie, 
minister of Irongray, in a letter to Mr. James Stirling, minister 
of Barony, GlasgoAv, dated May 9, 1722, says, " Your honest old 
friend, Mr. Veitch, is now gone to heaven, for he died yesterday 
morning, and his good wife departed this life on Friday last, so 
that they who lived long together on earth are now gone to glory, 
I may say, together also Mr. Veitch, for some months be- 
fore his death, wanted the use of his tongue, right arm and leg, 
and so lay almost as one dead long before he gave up the ghost. "f 
This venerable pair had been married fifty-eight years, and they 
were both interred on the same day, in the old church of Dumfries. 

We shall conclude this sketch with a few particulars relative 
to Mrs. Veitch's children. She had five sons and five daugh- 
ters. Of these, four died young. 

Mary, her first child, was born on the 23d of September, 1665, 
at the Westhills of Dunsyre, died March 9, 1666, and was buried 
at Dunsyre kirk. 

William, her second child, was born on the 2d of April, 1667, 
at the Westhills of Dunsyre. Samuel, her third child, was born 
on the 9th of December, 1668,. at Edinburgh, and baptized on the 
13th by Mr. John Blackadder. These two sons she had devoted 
to the Christian ministry, and sent to Holland to prosecute their 
studies at the university of Utrecht ; but the young men expressed 
their decided preference for the military profession, and, when 
the prince of Orange came over to England, in 1688, they held 
commissions under him. Both of them served in Flanders 
during the war with France, which broke out after the Revolu- 
t Letters to Wodrow, vol. x., 4to, no. 172, MSS. in Advocates' Library. 



178 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

tion. William was a lieutenant in Angus's, or the Cameronian 
regiment and was wounded, in 1699, at the battle of Steinkirk 
He was shot through the left cheek, an inch below the eye, and 
the ball falling into his mouth, he spat it out. The two brothers 
afterward went out as captains of the forces of the Scottish colo- 
ny which it was intended to settle at the isthmus of Darien 
But the settlement came to a disastrous termination. Captain 
William died at sea on returning home after the evacuation. Cap- 
tain Samuel ultimately settled at New York, where he married a 
granddaughter of Mr John Livingstone, minister of Ancrum by 
whoju he had a daughter called Aleda, who married an American 
gentleman of the name of Pinkrie, near Philadelphia 

MarT^T f °r "I 1 Chi ! d ' WaS b0m at Edi " bur J?h on the 9th of 
March, 1671 died at Armstoum, on the 10th of April, 1672 

month* m Churcll ->' ard of Tem P^ on the 12th of d* 

Ro^hT; 1161 * f^J-r J b0rn at FaIalies > in the parish of 
Rothbury in Northumberland, on the 19th of July, 1672 ; died at 

W iron f 8b ? M / rtlM r > 1684 > ™* was buried at' Nether 
Wilton, four miles from Morpeth. This is the boy of whose 
death an account has previously been given * 

oflSt'^^ 

^"JiSSL M ' CUll ° Ch ' ° f ArdWd1 ' °° thG 7th ° f 

of March 2e i r fi?« r S n enth ^ ™ born at Harnam > on *e 16th 

I 7 ?•' 76< Devotln S himself to the Christian ministry he 

studied divinity under the learned Mr. George CampbeH nrofe,! 

sor of theology m the college of Edinburgh. After E icenaed 

™ WS sabba ? mormng Ieclurer in the Tr °» ch "- h ; 

upon Mr. M'Alla s mortification. This situation he left in May 
1703, having received a call to be minister at Ayr to which 
charge he was ordained on the 12th of that month' He soon 
after married Margaret, daughter of the venerable Mr Patrick 
tTonr'But b St ? !° f 'T'" 6 ' a y ° Un ° lad - V ° f ^ Personal at c- 
naL ™ n0t l °r\ g SUVV1Ve - When at Edinburgh attend- 

ing the commission, in December, 1706, he was seized with a 

tTsT^u: 1 ;" neSS ' r d dl6d °" the 13th 0f that -onth U He 
umnhant T al r ian k ™ omm ™ piet * V ' and his death ™ ■* 
£ ve her bi ? S , Wlfe t0 hlS bedside ' he told her he *»■« 

«wh^hhlinT g u 1SS '^ reco «™ended her to his God, 
*ho, he said, has been all in all to me ;" and when she asked 
* See page 173. 



MKS. WILLIAM VKITCH. 179 

him whether he Avould not desire to live with her, and serve God 
some time longer in the church below, he answered in the nega- 
tive. Then calling out to some of the ministers who were in the 
room with him, he said, " Ye passengers for glory, how near, 
think you, am I to the New Jerusalem ?" One of them answer- 
ed, " Not far, sir !" He rejoined, " I'll wait and climb until I be 
up among that innumerable company of angels, and the spirits of 
just men made perfect." They removed his wife out of the 
room ; but when he was just expiring, she rushed in to the bed- 
side. Waving with his hand, he said, " No more converse with 
the creature, I never, never will look back again ;" and immedi- 
ately breathed out his spirit into the hands of his redeeming God. 
His mother, who gives this account in her diary, adds, " It need 
not be a surprisal to me, for near a year before his death, he 
preached upon these words, ' Remember, Lord, how short my 
time is :' and when he was at home in his family in Ayr, in 
prayer he would be so transported with the joys of heaven, as if 
he would have flown away ; and his young wife* would often say 
to him, it was a terror to her to hear him so much upon death ; 
but he said it was none to him ; so he lived desired, and died 
lamented." 

Sarah, her eighth child, and third daughter, was born at Stan- 
tonhall, in the parish of Longhorsly, in Northumberland, on the 
7th of November, 1677. She became the wife of James Young, 
of Guiliehill, from whom, says Dr. M'Crie, writing in 1825, 
Samuel Denholm Young, Esq., of Guiliehill, is descended. 

Agnes, her ninth child, and fourth daughter, was born at Stan- 
tonhall, on the 20th of January, 1680. She married Mr. John 
Somerville, minister of Caerlaverock ; to whom she had six chil- 

" This lady was afterward married to Mr. Robert Wodrow, minister of East- 
wood, the indefatigable historian of the sufferings of the church of Scotland. The 
marriage ring presented to her by both her first and second husband are still pre- 
served as family relics. " How it has so happened," says a writer in the Edinburgh 
Christian Instructor, for December, 1825, " we shall not at present tell ; but so it is, 
that we have, while writing this article, actually on our forefinger, the identical ring 
which Mr. Ebenezer Veitch presented to his wife, previous to marriage. It is a 
plain gold one, with small ivory beads around its outer edge, and within is this 
Latin inscription, which we have some difficulty in translating intelligibly. We 
give it verbatim et literatim, as we see it, and leave our readers to make out what 
they can of it, ' Ebenezer, el Jehovah, Feitch.' The sense which we conjecture is 
not very luminously conveyed, but it seems to savor of the eminent piety of its au- 
thor. The ring presented to the same lady by Mr. Wodrow, her second husband, is 
also now before us, and its moral is more intelligible. The device is a flaming heart 
in the centre, with a hand on the one side giving, and another on the other side re- 
ceiving; and this plain English motto: ' I give you mine, and grasp at yours.' " 
The writer adds, " From these specimens, we see that the clerical gentlemen of our 
olden times, while they were not destitute of learning, were not devoid of the tender 
affections:" 



180 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

dren, one son and five daughters. Mr. Charles Sheriff, the dumb 
miniature painter, was her grandson. She died of her seventh 
child, not brought to bed, on the 14th of August, 1712 ; and when 
medical assistance failed to do her any good, she said, " Now I 
see that God calls me to die and leave this world, and all my 
relations, which I am most willing to do." Then taking fare- 
well, with the greatest composure and deliberation, of her pa- 
rents, children, servants, and husband, leaving her blessing to 
every one present, and to all her friends who were absent, with 
her eyes lifted up to heaven, she cried, " my beloved ! be thou 
as a roe and as a young hart upon the mountains of divisions." 
Then she begged that her friends present would unite in praying 
that God would mitigate her sufferings in passing through the 
dark valley, and land her in her wished-for port. Before prayer 
was ended, her pain was abated, and closing her eyes, a little 
after, with her own hand, she died with great tranquillity. 

Janet, her tenth child, and fifth daughter, was born on the 30th 
of January, 1682, at Stantonhall, her father being then at Lon- 
don. She died on sabbath, the 26th of March, 1693, near eight 
o'clock at night, at Peebles. Before her death, her father hav- 
ing been engaged in prayer, she said, " Now I am content to 
leave you all," and inquired at her mother whether they should 
know one another in heaven ? Her mother told her she thought 
they would, and asked her whether she thought she would win 
there; to which she answered, "I hope I shall." She died 
without any pain ; and with as much composure as if she had 
been going to see a friend, kissing her father, mother, and sis- 
ters, and bidding them all farewell. 



MRS. JOHN LIVINGSTONE, &c. 18] 



MRS. JOHN LIVINGSTONE, &c. 

Mrs. Livingstone, whose maiden name was Janet Fleming, 
was the eldest daughter of Bartholomew Fleming-, merchant in 
Edinburgh, by his wife Marion Hamilton. She was married, 
June 23, 1635, to the famous Mr. John Livingstone, afterward 
minister of Ancrum, by his father, in the West church of Edin- 
burgh.* In the following notices respecting this lady, it is not 
our intention to trace the whole of her history, but merely to 
select a single chapter from her life, relating to matters which 
fell out in the year 1674, when she was considerably advanced 
in years. Previous to this period, she had experienced many 
vicissitudes and trials, having shared in the hardships endured 
by Mr. Livingstone, in the cause of nonconformity, both in Ireland 
and in Scotland ; and when, on his being banished his majesty's 
dominions, by the privy council, for his fidelity to the same 
cause, he had embarked for Holland in the beginning of April, 
1663, she followed him in December that year, taking with her 
two of her children, and leaving the other five in Scotland. She 
remained in Holland till the death of Mr. Livingstone, which 
took place in August, 1672, when she returned to Scotland. Mr. 
Robert M'Ward, writing from Rotterdam to Lady Kenmure, says : 
" Madam, it's like you will look for some account of the death 
of that great man of God, non-such Mr. Livingstone, which I 
would have given you, but your ladyship will have it more per- 
fectly from his worthy relict, by whom you will be waited upon."f 

On her return to Scotland, she took up her residence in Edin- 
burgh, where two of her sons were resident. It was within less 
than two years after her return, that she and several other pres- 
byterian ladies were concerned in those transactions which we 
now purpose to rehearse. Our narrative relates to a petition which 
she and these ladies drew up and presented to the lords of his 
majesty's privy council, praying for liberty to enjoy undisturbed 
the preaching of the gospel by the nonconforming ministers ; and 
to the proceedings of the privy council against these ladies on 
that account. This will furnish a good illustration of the patri- 
otic interest taken by the ladies of that period in the cause of 
suffering nonconformity, as well as of the determination of the 
government to ride rough-shod over every attempt to obtain a 
mitigation or redress of grievances. 
* Livingstone's Life written by Himself, t Wodrow MSS., vol. lviii., fol., No. 55. 

16 



182 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

The state of matters in which this petition originated may be 
briefly described. For about three months in the early part of 
the year 1674, an almost entire cessation from persecution took 
place. During this respite, which was called " the Blink," the pro- 
scribed ministers fearing that it would be of short duration, preached 
both in private houses and in the fields with unremitting and 
ardent zeal. In the west, field-meetings were not of very fre- 
quent occurrence, the indulgence of 1672, which extended chiefly 
to that part of the country, rendering such meetings unnecessary ; 
but in Fifeshire, Perthshire, Stirlingshire, Dumbartonshire, Lo- 
thian, Merse, Teviotdale, Annandale, Nithsdale, and other places, 
to which the indulgence did not extend, or where it was more 
limited in its operation, they were very frequently held in mount- 
ains, mosses, and moors, and attended by immense multitudes. 
This liberty was owing, not to any change in the spirit or policy 
of the government, but solely to political causes, among which 
the chief cause was the animosities then existing between the 
different parties of statesmen. Lauderdale, who had now for a 
considerable time been a privy counsellor in England, and the 
chief manager of affairs in Scotland, had, by his intolerable arro- 
gance, and more especially by his violent and tyrannical admin- 
istration, created a powerful opposition against him, both in Eng- 
land and in Scotland. So strong was the faction against him in 
Scotland, which was headed by the duke of Hamilton, that when 
he came down as his majesty's commissioner to hold the Scottish 
parliament, which was to meet in March, 1674, finding it would 
bo difficult or impossible for him to maintain his ground in it, he 
adjourned it to October, but never after ventured upon another 
Scottish parliament. 

To this state of political parties in Scotland we are mainly to 
trace the tranquillity enjoyed during " the Blink." Lauderdale 
secretly encouraged conventicles, promising the persecuted min- 
isters ample and unrestrained liberty, that he might blame his 
opponents to the king, as encouragers of these " seminaries of 
rebellion ;" and on the other hand his opponents connived at such 
meetings, that they might impute the prevalence of them to him. 
But matters changed upon a sudden : the tempest of persecution 
again rose into fury. On his return to London, after the adjourn- 
ment of the Scottish parliament, Lauderdale, who, notwithstand- 
ing the opposition made to him both in England and in Scotland, 
retained the royal favor, laid the blame of the conventicles held 
in Scotland upon his opponents. The Scottish privy council 
was remodelled according to his wishes, the most of his enemies 



MRS. JOHN LIVINGSTONE, &c. 183 

being kept out, and others friendly to him put in their places ; 
and by his advice, letters from the king to the council folloAved 
each other in succession, requiring them to adopt every means 
for suppressing conventicles. On the 4th of June, 1674, when 
the new council met for the first time, a letter from his majesty, 
dated May 19th, was read, complaining that not only private but 
also field conventicles were held, and that the pulpits of the reg- 
ular ministers were invaded in some places ; and requiring the 
council to use their utmost endeavors for apprehending and trying 
field-preachers, invaders of pulpits, and such heritors as were 
ringleaders at field conventicles and in pulpit invasions, calling 
in the standing forces and militia to their aid. 

Such were the circumstances which gave rise to this petition. ' 
Mrs. Livingstone and a considerable number of other presbyte- 
rian ladies in Edinburgh, especially the wives and widows of 
ejected nonconforming ministers, and some ladies of rank, were 
in no small degree distressed at the threatened prospect of re- 
newed and aggravated persecution. Little could they do to prevent 
the impending calamity. Prayer to God was almost their only re- 
maining resource. But necessity is prolific in suggesting expedi- 
ents, and it occurred to some of them that, as it was dangerous 
for ministers to petition the privy council for the redress of their 
grievances, imprisonment being the only answer likely to be 
made, they themselves might petition the council for the undis- 
turbed enjoyment of the gospel preached by the nonconforming 
ministers. Mrs. Livingstone, it is not improbable, was the per- 
son by whom this expedient was suggested. Precedents for such 
a course, of which she was not ignorant, were not wanting in the 
history of the church of Scotland in former days. She well 
knew that such a method had been adopted in similar circum- 
stances, and with perfect success, by a worthy relative of her 
own, her aunt Barbara Hamilton,* and other religious matrons 
of Edinburgh. When Robert Blair and other nonconforming 
ministers, who had been deposed by the bishops of Ireland for 
nonconformity, had come over to Scotland in 1637, and when 
Mr. Blair was threatened with still harsher treatment from the 
Scottish prelates, these ladies presented to the privy couucil a 
petition, praying that he and other ministers similarly situated 

* Barbara Hamilton was Mrs. Livingstone's mother's sister, and the wife of Mr. 
John Mein, merchant-burgess, Edinburgh. Two of Samuel Rutherford's letters are 
addressed to this lady. She died in September, 1654 ; and her husband, Mr. Mein, 
on the 30th of July that same year. Among the debts owing to them at their de- 
cease is, "By my Lady Lome, xxii lb. By my Lady Kenmure, xii lb. 2 shillings." 
— Register of Confirmed Testaments in her Majesty's Register House, Edinburgh. 



184 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

might have liberty to preach the gospel publicly wherever they 
were called or had opportunity to do so ; and they at once ob- 
tained their request.* Guided by such a laudable example, she 
and the rest of these ladies made up their mind to make the 
attempt, whatever might be its success ; and accordingly, without 
the aid of any of their ministers, or of any man, they themselves 
drew up a petition to be presented to the privy council. The 
manner in which they were to transmit it was somewhat similar 
to the manner in which Barbara Hamilton and her associates 
presented their petition to the privy council in behalf of Robert 
Blair and the other nonconforming ministers of their time. 

On the morning of the 4th of June, the day on which the first 
meeting of the new council was to be held, all the ladies friendly 
to the petition were to assemble in the parliament close, some 
time before the members of the council came up to the meeting. 
Mrs. Livingstone, in consideration either of her advanced years, 
or of her superior address, or of both, was appointed to present 
the petition to the lord-chancellor, the earl of Rothes, and to re- 
quest him to transmit it to the council ; while fourteen other la- 
dies, mostly ministers' widows, were engaged each to present a 
copy to some one of the principal counsellors, as they came up 

* " That worthy wife B. H. [Barbara Hamilton] brings to Mr. Blair papei-, pen, 
and ink, saying, 'Write a supplication to the secret council, and humbly petition 
them in your own name, and in the name and behalf of others in your condition, lor 
liberty to preach the gospel publicly, wherever ye pet a call from honest ministers 
or people, and we that are wives shall put it in the treasurer's hand as he goes in 
to tbe council.' W hereunto Mr. Bluir condescended, and delivers his supplication, 
written with lus own hand, to her. The first council-day immediately following, 
there convenes a great number of the religious matrons in Edinburgh, drawn up as 
a guard, from the council house door to the street. They agreed to put the suppli- 
cation in the hand of the oldest matron, Alison Cockbnrn, relict of Mr. Archibald 
Row. When the treasurer, Traquair, perceived the old woman presenting to him a 
paper, suspecting that it was something that would not relish with the council, he 
did put her by, and goes quickly from her toward the council-house door; which 
being perceived by Barbara Hamilton, she appears and pulls the paper out of the 
old weak woman's hand, and coming up to Traquair, did with her strong arm and 
big hand fast grip his gardie [that is, arm], saying, ' Stand, my lord, in Christ's 
name, I charge you, till I speak to you.' He, looking back, replies, ' Good woman, 
what would you say to me ?' — ' There is,' said she, ' a humble supplication of Mr. 
Blair's. All that he petitions for is, that he may have liberty to preach the gospel, 
&c. I charge you to befriend die matter, as you would expect God to befriend yoa 
in your distress, and at your death !' He replied, ' I shall do my endeavor, and what 
I can in it.' Mr. Blair's supplication was granted by the secret council ; and so he 
had liberty, not only to stay in Scotland, but to preach the pospel to any congrega- 
tion where he got an orderly call." — (Row's Life of Robert Blair, pp. 153, 154.) Row 
adds : " By this narration you may perceive how the Lord, in this time, stirred up 
and animated tbe spirits, not only of men, especially of the nobles, who were mng- 
natet et primores regni, and of the ministers of the "gospel, but even of holy snd reli- 
gious women, who, as they first opposed the reading of that black service-book, July 
23, 1637, so the Lord made them instrumental in many good affairs for the promoting 
of the blessed Reformation." 



MRS. JOHN LIVINGSTONE, &c. 185 

to the council-house. According to this arrangement, a large 
number ofladies* convened in the parliament close on the morn- 
ing of the 4th of June, waiting the arrival of the counsellors. 
At length the chancellor's coach comes up first ; and when he 
and Archbishop Sharp, who had been riding with him in the 
coach, alighted, Mrs. Livingstone was ready to accost him, and 
the crowd, eager to witness the scene, gathered to the spot. 
Sharp, who seems to have known nothing of the matter before- 
hand, seized with a guilty terror, kept close to the chancellor's 
back,f imagining, as was not unnatural for a man to do who had 
now spent many years in persecuting his old friends, the presby- 
terians, and who had incurred very general odium, that the ob- 
ject of these ladies, whom he had. often maligned as fanatics, 
and even by still worse names,;}: was to murder him. But his 
alarm was groundless ; for though some of them, becoming ex- 
cited at the very sight of the man with whom was associated, in 
their minds, all the infamy of the traitor and the persecutor, called 
him Judas and traitor ; and one of them still bolder than the rest, 
laid her hand upon his neck, and told him that ere all was done 
that neck would pay for it ; there was no intention or attempt to 
do him any bodily harm.|| While these things are going on, 
Mrs. Livingstone addressed herself to the chancellor, informing 
him of the object of so many females in assembling together, and 
presenting to him the petition, which she entreated him to lay 
before the honorable members of his majesty's privy council. 
The chancellor, respectfully taking off his hat, graciously re- 
ceived the petition from Mrs. Ijivingstone, and read it on the 
spot. After he had read it, and had talked a short time with 
some of the other ladies, jesting with them according to his fa- 

* The number, according to Row, was one hundred and nine (Life of Robert 
Blair, p. 539) ; but, as according to Kirkton, they " filled the whole parliament close," 
the number must have been much greater. — History of the Kirk of Scotland, p. 345. 

t " When the counsellors came out of their coaches. Sharp (who was asflyed as a 
fox) clave close to the chancellor's back." — Row's Life of Robert Blair, p. 539. 

+ Female presbyterians were the objects of Sharp's peculiar hatred. When, in 
1664, the privy council confined William. Gordon of Earlston, to the town of Edin- 
burgh, for keeping conventicles and not attending his own parish church, Sharp, who 
had been at St. Andrews, on hearing of this on his arrival in Edinburgh, " did chal- 
lenge the chancellor for remissness, and not executing the laws against delinquents, 
and, in particular, for confining of Earlston to Edinburgh, alleging it had been bet- 
ter to send him to his own house in Galloway, than to detain him among the fanatical 
wives of Edinburgh." The consequence was that Earlston was banished out of 
Scotland. (Row's Life of Robert Blair, p. 464.) Even in his public sermons. Sharp 
could not refrain from giving expression to his malignant hatred of presbyteriim 
women. In his opening discourse, at one of his diocesan synods at St. Andrews, 
he indulged in a strain of vehement invective "against the unconform honest people, 
especially against women, whom he called ' she zealots,' ' Satanesses.' " — Ibid., p. 523. 

j| Kirkton's History, pp. 344-346. 

16* 



186 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

cetious manner, and apparently pleased with the fright into which 
Sharp Avas thrown, Mrs. Livingstone proceeded to address him 
in support of the petition, " and took hold of his sleeve. He 
bowed down his head, and listened to her (because she spoke 
well), even till he came to the council-chamber door."* The 
petition is as follows : — 

" Unto the Right Honorable the Lords of his Majesty's Privy Coun- 
cil — The Humble Supplication of several Women of the City 
of Edinburgh, in their own name, and in the name of many 
who adhere thereto, Humbly Showeth : — 

" That whereas your petitioners being long deprived of the 
blessing of a faithful public ministry, and of the purity of wor- 
ship and ordinances that God hath commanded, and after much 
sad suffering for attendance thereupon in private ; yet for some 
short while bvgone, and in the time when his majesty's commis- 
sioner was among us, your lordship's petitioners have, without 
molestation, enjoyed some small liberty by his majesty's gracious 
connivance; yet now we are sadly -alarmed, that through the 
malicious and false information given in by some of those who 
side with and serve the bishops, your lordships may be induced, to 
the grief of the hearts of many thousands in this land, to trouble 
the quiet meetings of the Lord's people at his worship. 

" May it therefore please your lordships to grant such liberty 
to our honest ministers, that are through the land and in this city, 
that they may lawfully, and without molestation, exercise their 
holy function, as the people shall in an orderly way call them ; 
that we may, to the comfort of our souls, enjoy the rich blessing 
of faithful pastors, and that our pastors may be delivered from 
any sinful compliance with what is contrary to the known judg- 
ment of honest presbyterians. In doing whereof, your lordships 
will do good service to God and the king's majesty, and deeply 
oblige all honest people in the land. And your petitioners shall 
ever pray," &c.f 

The other fourteen ladies, in like manner, presented copies of 
the petition to other members of the privy council, as they passed 
to the council-chamber. The lady who presented her copy to 

* Kirkton's History, pp. 344-34G. See also Wodrow's History, vol ii,. p. 269. 
Row, in his Life of Robert Blair, gives a different account of the chancellor's recep- 
tion of the ladies petition. He says that " a grave matron," namely Mrs. Living- 
stone, " presented their supplication" to the chancellor, " entreating; that he would 
present it to the council, but the chancellor slighting her, and refusing the supplica- 
tion, was forced to take it from some others who thrust themselves in betwixt him 
and the trembling prelate, promising it should be read and considered." — Row'i 
Life of Robert Blair, p. 539. t Wodrow's History, vol. ii., p. 2U9. 



MES. JOHN LIVINGSTONE, &c. 187 

Lord Stairs, one of the senators of the college of justice — a man 
who was formerly a zealous covenanter, but who became in the 
end a bitter persecutor — found no such kind reception as Mrs. 
Livingstone met with from the chancellor ; for he rudely threw 
it on the ground, which made one remind him of his having be- 
longed at one time to the remonstrators, the strictest sect of the 
presbyterians during the commonwealth, and of his having penned 
the Western Remonstrance, a paper, for adherence to which, Mr. 
James Guthrie and others suffered to the death.* 

In the proceedings of Mrs. Livingstone and her female asso- 
ciates, which we have now narrated, a liberal government would 
have found little to blame, and no cause whatever for adopting 
against these ladies legal proceedings. Their intentions were 
perfectly loyal ; their petition in its object was highly reasonable, 
and though containing a plain declaration of their principles, was 
couched in very moderate and respectful language. They assem- 
bled in the parliament close in the most peaceable manner ; and 
to none of the members of the council, with the exception of 
Archbishop Sharp, did they offer the slightest disrespect. But 
their lordships, resolute on putting down all petitioning and rep- 
resentation of grievances, which they well knew to be one of the 
most effectual safeguards against misgovernment and oppression, 
arbitrarily pronounced both the meeting and the petition sedi- 
tious, and proceeded against those concerned in them as guilty 
of sedition. 

The counsellors having got into the council-house through the 
crowd, the petition was read. Meanwhile the women were wait- 
ing in the parliament close for an answer. But there was no in- 
tention to grant them their request ; and the lord-provost, with 
two bailies, were sent out to entreat them peaceably to disperse 
and retire to their homes ; which if they did, he promised to be- 
friend them and their cause, and that their supplication should 
receive an answer to-morrow. They did as the provost, who 
spoke to them very discreetly, desired them ; the parliament close 
was quickly cleared, and all was again quiet, as if no crowd had 
assembled. At that meeting of council, all the members were 
desired to name such ladies as they knew to be among the crowd. 
A few were named, and they were summoned to compear before 
the council at their next meeting, which was to be held on the 
11th of June. A committee was also appointed, to make inquiry 
into all the circumstances connected with the petition, by whom 

Kirkton's History, pp. 344-346. Wodrow's History, vol. ii., p. 269. Row's Life 
of Robert Blair, p. 469. 



188 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

it was drawn up, and who had presented the different copies to 
the members of council.* 

On the 11th of June, the ladies summoned, who were about a 
dozen, made their appearance at the bar of the council. They 
were desired, previous to their examination, to take the oath 
usually administered ; but this they all refused to do, not judging 
that they were bound to " tell the whole truth," in reference to 
the petition. They, however, declared in answer to questions 
put to them, that no man had any hand in suggesting it or drawing 
it up, and that they were moved to the course they had taken by 
a sense of their starving and perishing condition, through the 
want of the gospel, having none to preach to them but ignorant 
and profane men, whom they could not conscientiously hear. 
After being examined, they were required to subscribe to their 
depositions; but this, also, the most of them refused to do. They 
were then dismissed, and required again to compear before the 
council in the afternoon ; which they did, attended in the parliament 
close by a great multitude, consisting not only of women, but 
also of men, all resolved to stand by them, and to prevent their 
being imprisoned. Having been again examined, they were put 
together in a room ; and the provost of Edinburgh was sent out 
to disperse the crowd. But the crowd peremptorily refused to 
withdraw till their friends were dismissed, and declared their 
willingness to share with them in whatever they might suffer. 
On learning the bold resolution of the multitude without, the 
council dismissed the ladies who had been at their bar ; entreating 
them to repair peaceably to their homes.f 

But, as if determined by all means, fair or foul, to be avenged 
on these ladies, who had presumed to arraign the policy of the 
government, the council dismissed them, not honestly, but with 
the fraudulent intention of surprising them that night, and carry- 
ing them from their beds to prison. This intention, however, 
being whispered by some counsellors, the honest women left 
their own houses ; so that they all escaped being made prisoners 

* We have here followed Row, in his Life of Robert Blair, p. 539. Wodrow, 
whose account is different from that of Raw, mistakes the proceedinss of the privy 
council ou the llrh of Jime, when a second crowd assembled in the parliament close, 
for their proceedings on the 4th of June, the day on which the first crowd assem- 
bled. His narrative relates not, as he supposed, to their proceedings on the •Jth of 
that month, but to their proceedings on the 11th : and we have fo introduced it in 
the following paragraph. (Wodrow's History, vol. ii , p. 269.) Wodrow sa\ s that 
the petition was subscribed : but this seems to be incorrect. The privy council, as 
we shall afterward see, affirmed that no signatures were appended to it ; and there 
is no reason to call in question the truth of their statement. 

t Row's Life of Robert Blair, p. 539. Wodrow's History, vol. iL, p. 269. 



MRS. JOHN LIVINGSTONE, &c. 189 

at this time, with the exception of one poor woman, who appre- 
hended no danger.* 

This second crowd in the parliament close had the effect of 
still more irritating the privy council, and in their proceedings 
against the ladies, it formed an additional article in the libel 
charging them with sedition. It strengthened their previous 
purpose, to inflict some exemplary punishment on these female 
petitioners ; a purpose formed with the design of frightening any, 
whether male or female, from in future making any similar at- 
tempt to lay their grievances before government, and to seek re- 
dress. To have granted the prayer of the petition, as they rea- 
soned, would have been to open the sluice to an inundation, 
which would have overflowed every barrier, putting it beyond 
their power to hem it in, or to say, " Hitherto shalt thou come, and 
no farther." 

The proceedings of the privy council against these ladies 
continued till near the close of the year ; and their case formed 
an article in most of the letters which came from the king to the 
council during the summer. From the register of the proceed- 
ings of the council we learn that, on the 25th of June, several 
ladies who had refused to depone before the council, or commit- 
tee of council, respecting the meeting of the 4th of June, and the 
petition, were lying in prison ; for, at their meeting of that day, 
" The lords of his majesty's privy council do recommend to the 
earls Marischall, Linlithgow, Caithness, Wigton, and the lord- 
register, to meet to-morrow, and to consider any address which 
shall be made to them by Margaret Johnston,! Lilias Campbell, 
or any others, who are prisoners in the tolbooth of Edinburgh, 
for not deponing before the council, or committee of council ;J as 
also to consider any address which shall be made for any persons 
against whom certification is granted upon that account, with 
power to them to set the said persons at liberty, or to continue 
further execution of the certification against them, upon their 
giving their oaths ; and appoint any two of them to be a quo- 
rum."§ 

* Row's Life of Robert Blair, p. 539. 

t Margaret Johnston was a daughter of the celebrated Archibald Johnston, Lord 
W arris ton. 

t That is, for refusing to make their depositions upon oath. In a letter to the 
duke of Lauderdale oti the 2d of July, the council say, " Inquiry has also been made 
concerning the petition offered in a tumultuary way by some women, of whom di- 
verse being cited, these appearing, and refusing to give their oaths as to the points 
interrogated upon, are imprisoned, and certification is granted against such as were 
absent." — Wodrow's History, vol. ii., p. 241. 

§ Register of Acts of Privy Council. 



190 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

The privy council, who were sufficiently disposed of them- 
selves to deal harshly with the female petitioners, were urged on 
by the court at London, which was still guided, in the manage- 
ment of Scottish affairs, almost exclusively by the counsel "of 
Lauderdale, the Ahithophel of the court of Charles II., as he 
was designated by some of the Scottish martyrs. On the 30th 
of June the council received a letter from his majesty, dah 
23d of that month, stating that he had received inibrraati 
" that seditious petition of many women, and of their tumultuous 
carriage at the delivering of it ;" and requiring the council to use 
their "utmost rigor in finding out ; : > 1 bringing to just judgment 
the ringleaders of such seditious nnd insolent practices, and for 
quelling that mad spirit."* To the prosecution against these 
women, which was severe enough before, this letter gave a new 
impulse. Their houses were searched night and day; the 
magistrates of Edinburgh had recourse to everv means in order 
to discover such as were present in the parliament close ; and 
some ol those who had been present, on being brought before the 
privy council, and refusing to depone upon oath, were at length 
denounced.! 

The case of these ladies again came under the consideration 
of the council, at their meeting on the 16th of July, when the 
council " nominate and appoint the earls Marischalf, Caithness, 
Linlithgow, W igton, and the lord-register, to meet upon Saturday 
next, at 3 o'clock, and to consider the condition of these persons 
imprisoned for being at the tumultuary meeting in the parliament 
close and to report their opinion concerning them to the council ; 
as, also, to examine such of the women as were called and com- 
peared and were not dismissed by the council, and such others 
as shall appear before the committee, with power to the commit- 
tee to imprison such persons as they shall rind cause, and to re- 
port." At the same meeting, the " council having considered the 
petition of Margaret Johnston, prisoner in the tolbooth of Edin- 
burgh, do ordain the magistrates of Edinburgh to set her at lib- 
erty, she first finding sufficient caution to confine herself to a 
chamber in the town of Edinburgh, and not to remove forth 
thereof, until the council shall give order anent her, under the 
pain of five hundred merks."| 

Again taking up this case, at their meeting on the 21st of July, 
the council " ordain and command the committee formerly ap- 
pointed to examine that tumult of the women in the parliament 

• Wodrow's History vol. ii p. 238. f Row'b Life of Robert Blair, p. 545. 
t itegisterof Acts of Privy Council. 



MRS. JOHN LIVINGSTONE, &c. 191 

close, " to call before them all such persons as have been given 
up in list already, or against whom they shall have information, 
or who have been already summoned, as accessory to that tumult, 
except such as appeared and were dismissed by the council, and 
to examine them upon their own accession and guiltiness ; as 
also, to examine them upon oath, whom they knew to have ac- 
cession to the contriving, drawing, or writing of that seditious 
petition they had among them, what persons they saw and knew 
to be in the parliament close upon that account with them, who 
had the petition in their hands, or offered copies to' any of the 
council — and if they refuse to depone thereupon, that they forth- 
with commit the refusers to prison, until the council shall give 
further order, and Margaret Johnston to be begun with to-morrow ; 
and to report to the council from time to time."* 

From this act it appears that the council had not yet discov- 
ered that Mrs. Livingstone was the person who presented the 
petition to the chancellor. But by zealous and unremitting inqui- 
ries, they at length succeeded in discovering the names of a con- 
siderable number of ladies, who had been present at the " tumul- 
tuous convocation ;" and no time was lost in acting upon this 
discovery. Letters were raised against them, at the instance of 
Sir John Nisbet of Dirleton, his majesty's advocate, charging 
them with " seditious and unlawful practices," for which they 
" ought to be exemplarily punished, to the terror and example of 
others to commit and do the like in time coming," and summoning 
them to appear before the council personally, on the 30th of July, 
and answer to the complaint contained in the letters, and hear and 
see such order taken thereanent, as appertained under the pain 
of rebellion. The ladies against whom these letters were raised, 
were the following : Mrs. Elizabeth Rutherford ; Rachel Aird, 
spouse to William Lorimer, merchant, and Sarah Lorimer her 
daughter ; Catherine Montgomery, relict of Mr. Robert Blair ; 
Barbara Home, spouse to Mr. Robert. Lockhart ; Isabel Kennedy, 
spouse to James Clelland ; Elizabeth Dalziel, spouse to David 
Gray ; Agnes Henderson, spouse to Robert Simpson ; Margaret 
Dury, spouse to George Dundas, brother to the laird of Dundas ; 

t sister to Lord Melville ; Grissel Durham relict of 

Captain Drummond ; Mr. George Johnston's wife ; Mrs. Arnot ; 

t relict of Mr. John Nevay ; Sarah Brand, spouse to 

Alexander Gurshone, merchant in Edinburgh ; . . . f Kerr, La- 
dy Mersington, younger; and Rachel Johnston; Lady Cramond. 
It may be interesting to quote at some length, from the letters 

* Register of Acts of Privy Council. t Blanks in MS. 



192 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

raised against these ladies, both because they contain the privy 
council's account of the meeting in the parliament close, and their 
version of the petition, as well as a statement of the grounds upon 
which they found both to be seditious. The letters commence 
with an enumeration of the acts of parliament, of which the 
meeting and petition are said to be a violation : " Making men- 
tion that by the laws and acts of this kingdom, it is prohibit and 
statute, that no man come to any court but in quiet and sober 
manner, and all tumultuary convocations, commotions, uproars, 
and gatherings, especially within royal burghs, are prohibit under 
great and high pains ; and by diverse laws and acts of parliament, 
it is statute, that if any person or persons presume, or take upon 
hand, privately or publicly to utter by word or write any slan- 
derous speeches to the contempt and reproach of his majesty's 
proceedings, or to meddle with the affairs of his highness, and 
his estate and proceedings, they are to be repute as seditious 
and wicked persons, enemies to his majesty, and the common 
weal of the realm, and shall be punished with the pains therein 
contained : and by the second act of the second session of his 
majesty's first parliament, it is declared and statute, that if any 
person or persons shall by writing, libelling, or remonstrating, 
express, publish, or declare, any words or sentences 10 stir up 
the people to hatred or dislike of his majesty's royal prerogative, 
or of the government of the church by archbishops and bishops, 
as it is now settled by law, that every such person or persons so 
offending, shall be punished in manner and with the pains therein 
contained, and shall be liable to such farther pains as are due by 
the law in such ; and by the first act of the first session of his 
majesty's first parliament, entitled, ' Anent Separation and Diso- 
bedience to Ecclesiastic Authority,' his majesty did declare, that 
he expected from all his good and dutiful subjects, a due acknowl- 
edgment of, and hearty compliance with, his highness's govern- 
ment ecclesiastical and civil, as it is now established by law, 
within this kingdom, and that, in order thereunto, they will give 
their cheerful concurrence and assistance to such ministers as 
by public authority are admitted in their several parishes, and 
that his majesty will and doth account a withdrawing from, and 
not keeping and joining in, the ordinary meetings for divine 
worship in the ordinary parishes, to be seditious and of danger- 
ous consequence, and by the said act, the same is punishable 
with the pains therein contained, and such other corporal punish- 
ment as the lords of privy council shall think fit ; as also by di- 
verse acts against conventicles, it is statute, that no outed minister 



MRS. JOHN LIVINGSTONE, &c. 193 

not licensed by the council, and no other person not authorized 
by the bishop of the diocese, shall preach, expound scripture or 
pray, in any meeting, except in their own houses, and to those 
of their own family, and that none be present at such meetings, 
which by the said act are declared to be the ordinary seminaries 
of rebellion, under the pains therein expressed."* 

The letters next proceed to give an account of the meeting, 
and of the petition presented by the ladies. After naming the 
persons against whom they were raised,! they go on to say, that 
these persons " have, in manifest contempt of his majesty's au- 
thority, presumed to contravene the foresaid laws, and to commit 
and do the deeds, crimes, and seditious practices above mentioned, 
in so far as the said persons and their associates and complices, 
upon the [4th] day of June last, did in a most insolent, seditious, 
and tumultuary manner gather, convocate, and convene together 
in the court of his majesty's parliament house, in such a number 
and multitude of persons, that the said whole court was filled 
with women and a disorderly rabble, and the said convocation, 
commotion, and uproar was not only within the town of Edin- 
burgh, the chief and capital city of the kingdom, and ordinary 
seat and place of judicature, and specially his highness's council 
sitting there for doing of justice and preserving the quiet and 
peace of the kingdom, and punishing and preventing of tumults ; 
but the said tumultuous convocation was of purpose and of de- 
sign, because the council was to sit, upon the council day, and 
immediately before, and at the time of the sitting of his majesty's 
said council, and in court and at the very doors of the house 
where the council did sit, and upon pretence that they came to 
the council to present a petition. And shaking off all respect 
to his majesty's authority, and to the council's and counsellors', 
the said persons and their complices did proceed to so great a 
height of insolence, that many of the said women did go into, 
and place themselves on the stair of the council house, and others 
did stand in the court the way to the said council house ; and 
when the lords of council were coining to the said court, the 
multitude did so crowd and throng in upon them, that with great 
difficulty they could go up to the council house ; and while they 
were going through the close and up the stairs of the council 
house, some of the said women did take hold of some of them, 
and did give them the double of the petition, which they said 
they had given in to be presented to the council, and others, 
amidst the great noise and uproar, did revile and utter injurious 
* Decreets of Privy Council, July 30, 1674. t See their names above. 

17 



194 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

speeches against some of his majesty's counsellors. And as 
the said pretended petitioning, remonstrating, and application to 
his highness's privy council was most disorderly and seditious, 
and of dangerous example and consequence, as to the manner 
thereof, so it was also most seditious and scandalous as to the 
matter, and does contain and import reproaches and reflections 
upon his majesty's government, and meddling in the affairs of 
his majesty and his estate, and depraving his highness's laws 
and misconstructing his proceedings, and libelling and remon- 
strating seditious words and sentences, to stir up the people to 
the hatred and dislike of the government of the church by arch- 
bishops and bishops as it is now settled by law, in so far as the 
said petition is in name of several women without naming them, 
and without their subscriptions, and it is in their own name and 
in the name of all who will adhere to them, inviting others, and 
insinuating that they expect they will join with them ; and the 
said petition bears most falsely and most scandalously, that the 
petitioners had been long deprived of the inestimable blessing 
of the public worship and ordinances of God, whereas it is notor 
that his majesty's subjects do enjoy the blessing of the public 
worship and ordinances of God in great purity and peace, and 
that there is an orderly ministry, authorized and countenanced 
and established by law ; and the said persons by the petition 
foresaid do not only acknowledge their unlawful withdrawing 
from, and not joining with, the ordinary public meetings for di- 
vine worship, and their keeping of conventicles, and attendance 
upon worship in private, contrary to so many laws, but do pre- 
sume to desire liberty to keep the said private meetings and 
conventicles prohibited by so many laws, and that outed ministers, 
whom they call their ' honest ministers,' may be allowed to ex- 
ercise their function, as the people shall call them thereto, so 
that they might enjoy the rich blessing of faithful pastors, and 
that their pastors may be delivered from the sinful compliance 
of those who are contrary to the known judgment of honest pres- 
byterians ; by all which desires, expressions, and others, in the 
said petition, the petitioners do scandalously asperse and reflect 
upon his majesty's government, and in special upon the church, 
by archbishops and bishops, as it is settled by law, as if outed 
and disorderly ministers were the only honest ministers, and the 
people were deprived of the blessing of faithful pastors, because 
the said outed ministers are not allowed to preach, and as if 
obedience to the laws and compliance of ministers with his maj- 
esty's government ecclesiastical established by law were sinful." 



MRS. JOHN LIVINGSTONE, &c. 195 

The letters next adduce their assembling a second time, on 
the 11th of June, as a high aggravation of their alleged seditious 
conduct : " And the said persons, not content to have made the 
said seditious convocation, tumult, and uproar, at the time and in 
the manner above related, did again relapse and adventure upon 
the said seditious practices ; and upon the [11th] day of [June], 
being the next council day thereafter, when the council was about 
to sit, and the time of the sitting thereof, they did again convene, 
in the said place, and did make a disorderly convocation, commo- 
tion, and uproar, in manner, and with the same, if not worse cir- 
cumstances than is above libelled, and had the boldness and confi- 
dence to pretend that they came for an answer to the said petition." 

The letters next charge several of these ladies, as Catherine 
Montgomery and Isabel Kennedy, with having, when convened 
before the privy council (although they confessed their being 
present at the said tumults), altogether and obstinately refused 
" to declare upon oath their knowledge concerning the persons 
present and accessory to the said tumult, and other circumstances 
relating to the same ;" whereb)' - it is declared they had incurred 
the penalties contained in the " second act of the second session 
of his majesty's second parliament, entitled ' Act against delin- 
quents who should refuse to depone,' " by which " it is statute 
that all and every subject of this kingdom, of what degree, sex, 
or quality soever, who shall be called by his majesty's privy 
council, or any others having authority from his majesty, to de- 
clare upon oath their knowledge of any crimes against his majes- 
ty's laws, and the peace of the kingdom, and particularly of any 
conventicles or other unlawful meetings, and shall refuse or delay 
to declare or depone thereanent, they shall be punished in manner 
therein contained." 

Such is the amount of the charges brought against these female 
petitioners, and to answer to which they were summoned to ap- 
pear at the bar of the privy council. But none of them made 
their appearance, believing that had they appeared, and refused 
to make any acknowledgments, which, having committed no 
crime, they were not prepared to make, they would probably 
have been thrown into prison. Accordingly, after "being oft- 
times called and not compearing, the lords of his majesty's privy 
council, July 30, do ordain letters to be directed to messengers- 
at-arms to pass to the market-cross of Edinburgh . . .* and thereat, 
in his majesty's name and authority, duly, lawfully, and orderly, 
to denounce the said Mrs. Elizabeth Rutherford, &c.,f his maj- 
* Blank in MS. t See the other names at p. 191. 



196 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

esty's rebels, and put them to the horn, and escheit and imbring 
all their moveable goods and gear to his highness's use for their 
contempt and disobedience."* 

On the 29th of September, the privy council again convened, 
but little was done. " Only they were very hot upon the chase 
against the women that offered their petition."! 

As the name of Mrs. Livingstone does not occur among the 
ladies who were summoned to appear before the privy council 
on the 30th of July, and who, not appearing, were declared his 
majesty's rebels and put to the horn, it may be concluded that 
the council had not yet discovered that she was at the head of 
the movement, and was the person who presented the petition to 
the chancellor. But by subsequent inquiries they appear to have 
made this discovery, or to have found, at least, that at the " tu- 
multuous convocation" she had presented a copy of the petition to 
some one or other of the councillors. Accordingly, she and sev- 
eral other- ladies J were summoned to appear before the council 
on the 12th of November that year, " as being guilty of a tumult- 
uary convocation, commotion, and uproar, within the parliament 
close, in the month of June last, the time of the meeting and sil- 
ting of the council, and of presenting a most insolent and sedi- 
tious petition to some of the council.*' Mrs. Livingstone and the 
others who were summoned, compeared before the council on 
the 12th of November, and, on being examined, confessed that 
they were " present in the said tumult." The result was, that 
the lords of council banished them from the city of Edinburgh, 
Leith, and suburbs thereof, and ordained them against the 1st of 
December next to depart from the said bounds, discharging them 
to return thereto in future, as they would be answerable at their 
highest peril. || 

Mrs. Livingstone, and all the rest, with two exceptions, were 
obliged immediately to act in conformity with this sentence. 
The two exceptions were Margaret Johnston and Lilias Camp- 

* Decreets of Privy Council, July 30, 1674. t Row's Lite of Robert Blair, p. 552. 

t The names of the ladies, as given in the act of council, 12th of November, are 
Mrs. Elizabeth Rutherford; Margaret Johnston; Lilias Campbell; Lady Merebig- 
ton, elder; Bethia Murray, spouse to Hugh Mossman, couppar in Leith; Janet 
Fleming, relict of Mr. John Livingstone ; Catherine Montgomery, relict of Mr. Rob- 
ert Blair; Margaret Lundy, spouse to John Hamilton, merchant at the foot of the 
West Bow ; Margaret Drury, spouse to George Dundas, brother to the laird of Dun- 
das ; Isabel Kennedy, spouse to James Clelland, chirurgeon ; Rachel Aird, spouse 
to William Lorimer, merchant ; Sarah Lorimer, his daughter ; Barbara Home, spouse 
to Mr. Robert Lockhart ; Elizabeth Dalziel, spouse to David Gray, hat-maker; 
Grissel Durham, relict of Captain Drummond ; and Agnes Henderson, spouse to 
Robert Simpson in Edinburgh. 

|| Register of Acts of Privy Council. 



MRS. JOHN LIVINGSTONE, &c. 197 

bell, the execution of whose sentence was delayed for fourteen 
days by the council, at their meeting on the 3d of December, in 
answer to a petition presented by these ladies. 

After a short absence, some of the banished women privately 
returned to their own houses in Edinburgh. Receiving informa- 
tion of this, the authorities of the city caused search to be made 
for them.* But the storm appears gradually to have blown over, 
though the number of nonconforming ladies, and especially of 
nonconforming ministers' wives and widows, in Edinburgh, con- 
tinued to be a source of offence and uneasiness to the govern- 
ment.! 

Thus terminated the proceedings against Mrs. Livingstone 
and her fellow -petitioners, simply for their exercising a right of 
which no power on earth could justly deprive them. Their treat- 
ment by the council was, throughout, tyrannical and oppressive. 
Had they, like a regiment of amazons, assembled with pikes and 
muskets to do personal violence to their great enemy, Archbishop 
Sharp, as he at first dreaded, guilt would have lain upon them, 
great as his demerits were, and some pretext would have been 
afforded for the severity with which they were proceeded against. 
But they came together in no such warlike attitude, nor with any 
such intention. One writer of that period, Sir George Macken- 
zie, commonly called "the bloody Mackenzie," would indeed, 
either with the view of covering the tyranny of the government, 
or of stigmatizing these religious women, have it to be believed 
that they had meditated Sharp's destruction. " Petitions for able 
ministers," says he, " were given in to the council by many hun- 
dreds of women, who, filling the parliament close, threatened the 
archbishop of St. Andrews, who passed along with the chancel- 
lor, for whose coming he had waited in his own chamber ; and 
some of them had conspired to set upon him, when a woman ,| 
whom I shun to name, should raise her hand on high as a signal 
— to prevent which, the chancellor entertained the woman with 
insinuating speeches all the time as he passed to the council, and 
so did divert that bloody design. "|| A more gratuitous assertion 
it is impossible to make. Neither Kirkton nor Row, both con- 
temporary writers, nor Wodrow, who all narrate the history of 
this affair, give the smallest countenance to such a statement. 

* Row's Life of Robert Blair, p. 255. 

t On the 12th of March, 1679, " the council emitted sundry proclamations, and 
commanded all nonconformed ministers' relicts, or wives, to void the town." — Fonn- 
tainhall's Historical Notices of Scottish Affairs, vol. i., p. 225. 

t He no doubt means Mrs. Livingstone. 

|| Sir George Mackenzie's Memoirs of the Affairs of Scotland, &c, p. 273. 
17* 



198 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

And should their evidence be suspected of partiality, we mav 
appeal to the " Records of the Proceedings of the Privy Council," 
in which is registered the result of the long and patient inquiries 
of the committee of council into all the circumstances connected 
with the supplication, but in which a profound silence is preserved 
as to any such murderous intention ; a circumstance not likely to 
have occurred had there been any ground whatever for such a 
charge. It is indeed manifest, beyond controversy, from all these 
authorities compared, that the sole object of these ladies was the 
one ostensibly avowed in their petition. And yet Mackenzie's 
calumny has been taken up and given forth as historical truth by 
a writer of the present day. " These viragoes," says the editor 
of Law's Memorials, " headed by the Rev. Mr. Livingstone's 
widow, and a daughter of Lord Warriston, had laid a plan of 
murdering Archbishop Sharp, it being agreed that Mrs. Livings- 
tone was to hold up her hand as a signal for the pious sisterhood 
to rend the prelate in pieces ; but Lord Rothes contrived to en- 
gage her in conversation till the opportunity was lost."* 

Mrs. Livingstone subsequently went over to Holland. Re- 
peated allusions are made to her as residing there in the letters 
of Mr. John Carstairs to Mr. Robert M'Ward, Rotterdam, in the 
years 1677, 1678, and 1679; and whenever her name is men- 
tioned, it is always with some epithet expressive of the high 
esteem in which she was held by the writer. In a letter to 
M'Ward, dated July 26, 1677, Carstairs says, " I salute much in 
the Lord that mother in Israel, choice Mrs. Livingstone, and her 
sweet daughter."! In another letter to him, dated February 8, 

1678, he sends his salutations to her.;}: In a third letter to him, 
dated December 3, 1678, he says, " I am troubled for our loss of 
worthy Wallace, and am glad that that mother in Israel, Mrs. 
Livingstone, is spared a while, that we might not have sorrow 
upon sorrow."|| In a fourth letter to him, dated February 17, 

1679, he says, " I dearly salute your worthy wife, worthy Mr. 
Gordon, my kind and obliging friend, choice Mrs. Livingstone, 
a mother indeed in Israel."^ And in a fifth letter to him, dated 
Edinburgh, October, 1679, he again sends his salutations to her."^[ 
This is the last notice we have met with concerning her. How 
long she lived after this is uncertain, nor is it known whether 
she again returned to Scotland. The probability is, that she 

* Editors foot-note in Law's Memorials, p. 67. The editor refers to Kirktou and 
Wodrow as his authorities. But neither of these writers gives him the slightest 
support. Mackenzie, though not referred to, is his sole authority. 

t Wodrow MSS., vol. lix", folio, No. 65. % Ibid., No. 77. 

|| Ibid., No. 95. § Ibid., No. 109. If Ibid., No. 122. 



DUCHESS OF ROTHES. 199 

spent the remainder of her days in Holland, and that her ashes, 
like those of her distinguished husband, repose in that hospitable 
retreat of our persecuted forefathers.* 

Some of Mrs. Livingstone's children emigrated from Scotland 
to America, to the state of New York, where their descendants 
have, in the course of time, become people of the first distinction 
and weight in society. The late Dr. John H. Livingstone, min- 
ister of the Reformed Dutch church in New York, professor of 
divinity to that body, and president of Queen's College, New 
Jersey — one of the first men of his age and country, and whose 
memoirs have been written by Mr. Alexander Gunn, was the 
great-great-grandson of the subject of this memoir.f 



LADY ANNE LINDSAY, 

DUCHESS OF ROTHES. 



Lady Anne Lindsay was the eldest daughter of John, first 
earl of Lindsay, and fifteenth earl of Crawford, lord high treasu- 
rer of Scotland, by his wife, Lady Margaret Hamilton, second 
daughter of James, second marquis of Hamilton. J Her paternal 
grandmother was the excellent Lady Boyd, already noticed ; and 
her maternal grandmother was Lady Anne Cunningham, mar- 
chioness of Hamilton, of whom some account has also been 
given. 

Her father, who was the son of Lady Boyd, by her first hus- 
band, Robert, ninth Lord Lindsay of Byres, was, as we have seen 
before, § a man of sound religious principle, and a steadfast sup- 
porter of the second reformation cause. He warmly opposed, 
though without success, the passing of the act rescissory in the 
first parliament of Charles II., by which all the parliaments, since 
1633, were annulled, and all the proceedings for reformation be- 
tween 1638 and 1650 were denounced rebellious and treasona- 
ble ; and he declared himself against the establishment of prelacy, 
assuring his majesty that a measure so opposed to the feelings 
of the Scottish people would be followed by the Avorst effects. 

* Tbere is a portrait of Mrs. Livingstone in Gosford bouse, belonging to the earl 
of W emyss, as we learn from a foot-note in Kirkton's History, by the editor, p. 345. 
t Chambers' Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Scotsmen, art. John Livingstone, 
j Douglas's Peerage, vol. i., p. 387. § See p. 36. 



200 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

A strenuous defender of the lawfulness and obligation of the na- 
tional covenants, he refused to take the declaration abjuring them 
as unlawful oaths;* for which Charles II., though he much re- 
spected him, incited by Archbishop Sharp, deprived him of his 
office of lord high treasurer of Scotland. His nnswer, when 
Charles asked him whether he would take the declaration, is 
worthy of being recorded : " As I have suffered much," he said, 
" for your majesty, even nine years' imprisonment, forfeiture, and 
the ruin of my fortune, so I am resolved to continue your majes- 
ty's loyal and faithful subject, and to serve you in whatever I can 
with a good conscience ; but as for renouncing the covenant and 
taking the declaration, that I can not do with a safe and good 
conscience." And when Lauderdale — afraid lest his enemy 
Middleton should obtain the office of treasurer — urged him to 
take the declaration, by the argument that he would thus, by re- 
taining his place, be in a hotter capacity lor promoting the inter- 
ests of the nonconformists than he could he in a private station, 
he replied, like a man of principle, that he was taught not to do 
evil that good might come.f Resigning his situation as lord high 
treasurer, he retired to his house at Struthers, and spent the re- 
mainder of his days in privacy. " He was a man," says Doug- 
las, " of great virtue, of good abilities, and of an exemplary life 
in all respects. He died at Tyninghame in 1G76, aged about 
eighty."| 

Lady Anne's mother was also eminent for virtue and piety. 
Row speaks of her as "the carl of Crawford's most religious 
lady, who was deservedly praised of all who knew her;" and he 
informs us that, '* when all about her, and all Crawford's friends 
in Scotland were lamenting the loss of his place, she heartily 
rejoiced and blessed God that he had kept a good conscience, 
and himself free of perjury and covenant breaking, &c, trusting 
in God that he would provide for him and his."|| Robert Blair, 
who knew her personally, speaking of her on his death-bed, 
said, " My Lady Crawford, set her alone, set her alone among 
women. "§ 

Lady Anne, thus descended from godly parents, enjoyed the 
inestimable benefit of a religious education ; and her parents had 
the satisfaction of witnessing the fruits of their instructions and 
example in the eminence of her piety, which she exemplified 

* By the fifth act of the second session of parliament, 1(562, the declaration was 
ordained to be taken by all admitted to any public trust or office under his niaje.-ty's 
government in Scotland, and those already in office w ere ;dso required to subscribe ii. 

t Row's Lite of Robert Blair, p. 4-1). f Douglass Peerage vol. i , p. 3S6. 

|| Ibid., p. 4 12. ; Row's Life of Robert Blair, p. 495. 



DUCHESS OF ROTHES. 201 

throughout life by a conversation becoming the gospel. The 
fervor of her devotion, the benevolence of her disposition, the 
humility of her demeanor, and the sanctity of her deportment, 
are all honorably mentioned by her cotemporaries. Law de- 
scribes her as " a discreet, wise, virtuous, and good lady."* And 
others who knew her, speak in the highest terms of her Chris- 
tian excellence. In her youth, which was cotemporaneous with 
the best days of the covenant, she was strictly educated in the 
presbyterian faith, to Avhich she continued to adhere in its every 
variety of fortune, in its adversity, as well as in its prosperity. 
After the restoration of Charles II., she was exposed, by the cir- 
cumstances in which she was placed, to great temptations to 
become indifferent or hostile to the principles of presbytery. 
Her husband, John, sixth earl of Rothes, to whom she had been 
previously married, was a member of the persecuting government 
of Charles, and she was under the necessity of mingling, to a 
considerable extent, with the unprincipled and persecuting states- 
men of that period. But her convictions and feelings remained 
unaltered, and the ejected ministers, on whose side her sympa- 
thies were enlisted, she was ever ready, to the utmost of her 
ability, to befriend. Some of them she succeeded in continuing 
in their charges after their persecutors had marked them out for 
ejectment. Mr. Black, minister of Leslie, for example, a man 
whom she highly esteemed, and under whose ministry she sat 
when residing at Leslie house, was, though a nonconformist, 
through her intercession with the bishop of Dunkeld, continued 
in the exercise of his ministry in his own parish, when that pre- 
late, in 1664, summarily deposed all the other nonconforming 
ministers in his diocese. f The friendly interest she took in the 
persecuted ministers, she evinced in many other ways. " Rich in 
good works, ready to distribute, willing to communicate," she 
often ministered to their temporal necessities, and entertained 
them with hospitality and kindness when they visited her at Les- 
lie house. On these occasions they endeavored to keep out of 
the eye of the duke, for, though not naturally inclined to cruelty, 
yet, from political considerations, he put on the appearance of 
severity. He was not, however, ignorant that they were harbored 
and reset by the duchess, but he connived at them on her ac- 
count ; and on happening, as he sometimes did happen, to see 
any of them about the house, being a man of humor, he was in 
the habit of saying to her, " My lady, I would advise you to keep 
* Law's Memorials, p. 202. t Row's Life of Robert Blair, p. 473. 



202 THE LADIES OF THE OVENANT. 

your chickens in about, else I may pick up some of them."* 
Other anecdotes of a similar kind are still current, and have been 
recorded by Miss Strickland, in her very interesting work, en- 
titled " Lives of the Queens of England." After noticing that 
the duchess " favored the doctrines of the covenanters, and, as 
far as she could, protected their preachers, who were frequently 
concealed in the neighborhood of Leslie house," she adds, " The 

duke never sent out his officers to apprehend any of 

these persons without previously endeavoring to provide for their 
escape, by giving a significant hint to his compassionate duchess 
in these words, ' My hawks will be out to-night, my lady — so 
you had better take care of your blackbirds !' The local tradi- 
tions of Leslie add, that the signal by which her grace warned 
her spiritual proteges of their danger, was a white sheet sus- 
pended from one of the trees on the brow of the hill behind the 
house, which could be seen from a considerable distance. Other 
telegraphic signs the good lady had, no doubt, to intimate the 
absence of her spouse, when they might safely come forth and 
preach to their hill-side congregation."! 

Nor was she backward to intercede with the duke and the other 
members of the government for the persecuted ministers. Well 
assured of her friendly disposition, they confidently applied to 
her to exert in their behalf the influence which, from her situa- 
tion, she had with the duke and the other members of the privy 
council. An instance of this in the case of Mr. Robert "Wylie, 
when he was indulged minister of Fenwick, is preserved among 
his MSS., which form a part of Wodrow's Collections. All the 
indulged ministers having, on the 3d of September, 1675, got a 
charge of horning to pay their respective proportions of the ordi- 
nary fees due for the parishes where they resided, to the clerk 
and bursar of the diocesan synod of Glasgow, Mr. Robert Wylie, 
with several others, refused, from scruples of conscience, to make 
payment.^ He accordingly applied for a suspension, and sent a 
petition to the privy council, praying for relief from that imposi- 
tion ; and, at the same time, he transmitted a copy of the petition 
to the duchess, to give her an idea of the case, accompanied with 
a letter, requesting her friendly intercessions with the lords of 

* M'Crie's Memoirs of Veitch and Brysson, p. 295. Among other instances of 
the persecuted finding shelter in similar situations, it may be mentioned that, pre- 
vious to the civil wars, while Dr. Scott, dean of York, was employed at cards, or 
other games, to which he was much addicted, Mrs. Scott was attending a conven- 
ticle in another room ; the dean's house being reckoned the safest place for holding 
such assemblies. — Brooke's Lives of the Puritans, vol. ill., p. 528. 

t Vol. ix., p. 117. | Wodrow's History, vol. ii., 297. 



DUCHESS OF ROTHES. 203 

his majesty's privy council in furtherance of his petition. The 
letter, which is written in a tone that bespeaks the confidence he 
reposed in her sympathy and friendship, is as follows : — 

" Fenwick, 2d December, 1675. 
" Madam : I humbly crave pardon that I presume to trouble 
your ladyship with any petty business that concerns me ; but be- 
ing desirous to live quietly and with bosom-peace, to close my 
days in the work of the gospel, I hope it will not offend your 
ladyship that I entreat for your honor's help to hold off the incon- 
veniences that may apparently fall upon me, if not prevented. 
Madam, the matter is this : I am charged with letters of horning 
to pay fees to the clerk of the bishop's synod, and dues to a bur- 
sar of prelatic choice ; which, considering the presbyterian prin- 
ciples grounded on the Scriptures, and the standing obligation of 
the oath of God upon the conscience, I have no freedom to do ; 
and therefore sent for a suspension of the charges, which I hear 
was granted, but the clerks are loath to give it out until they 
would know the council's mind.* Being desirous to leave no 
means unessayed to hold weights off my conscience and troubles 
off my person, I have sent a petition, to be presented to the most 
honorable lords of his majesty's privy council, holdinff forth the 
grounds of my refusal, and supplicating that their lordships would 
grant me the free exercise of my ministry, with reservation of my 
principles and liberty of my judgment, and that their lordships 
would be pleased to discharge all legal procedure against me, as 
the petition does more fully purport ; a copy whereof, for your 
ladyship's information, I have herewith enclosed, knowing that 
the draught will be kept as a secret with your honor, and made 
use of only for your private information, that your ladyship may 
the better know the affair, and how to speak to it as occasion of- 
fers. And now, madam, my humble request to your ladyship is, 
that you would be pleased to speak to such members of the coun- 
cil as your honor thinks convenient, in order to the inclining of 
them to give a favorable answer unto my petition, that now, in 
my old days, when I am laboring under manifold infirmities, I 
may have liberty to close the latter part of my time in the peace- 
able preachings of the gospel, without pressing me with imposi- 
tions grating upon my conscience, and putting a crazy person to 
unnecessary tossings. Madam, I do again beg pardon for this 
presumption ; and wishing all abounding of grace, all the bles- 

* The difficulty of obtaining a suspension arose from the fact that the payment of 
the clerk's and bursar's fees was required by the council's act of indulgence, Sep- 
" r, 2, 1672. 



204 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

sings of the everlasting covenant to be plentifully poured out 
upon your ladyship and all yours, I rest, madam, your ladyship's, 

" [Thomas Wylie.]"* 

That the friendly endeavors of this lady would not be wanting 
to promote the success of Mr. Wylie's petition there can be little 
doubt, from what we know of her character ; and her interces- 
sions, judging from the result, were not without success. The 
relief which Mr. Wylie so earnestly solicited was at length 
granted by the government ; for in a new proclamation issued on 
the 1st of March next year, two of the rules, according to which 
the indulged ministers, by the indulgence 1672, were required to 
act, are omitted, the one regarding their waiting on diocesan 
meetings, and the other respecting their paying dues to the clerk 
and bursar of the diocesan synod. Mr. Wylie, however, contin- 
ued to feel uneasy under the other restrictions of the indulgence. f 

On the introduction of field-preaching into Fife, the duchess 
used to attend these much maligned and proscribed meetings. 
One of the places which, in those troublous times, she frequented 
to hear the sermons of the field-preachers, was Glenvale, a beau- 
tiful sequestered spot in the parish of Strathmiglo, Fifeshire, 
" lying between West Lomond and Bishop Hill. About the mid- 
dle of the valley it expands into a fine amphitheatre on the south, 
capable of containing many thousand persons ; on the north side 
is a large projecting rock, which is said to have been occupied 
by the ejected ministers as a pulpit. ''J In this favorite place of 
resort, which, in point of romantic scenery, may bear compari- 
son with the wild recess in Cartland craigs, where the cov- 
enanters of the west met for the same purpose, immense mul- 
titudes from all the surrounding districts often assembled for 
the worship of God. " In the year 1678," to quote from a 
well-attested Account of the Sufferings of the Presbyterians in 
Kinross-shire," the field-meetings were kept very frequently 
through the whole shire, but oftener in Glenvale, because it was 
the centre of that large congregation, which extended to Cupar of 
Fife on the east, to Kirkaldy on the south, to Salin and Dollar on 
the west, and to Perth on the north. There were five or six par- 
ishes engaged together to keep up the preaching of the gospel 
among themselves ; and by turns each parish sent to Edinburgh 

* Mr. Wylie's MSS. among the Wodrow MSS., vol. xxi., 4to, No. 16. There 
is no signature to the letter. It is addressed on the back, " For the Countess of 
Rothes." t Wodrow's History, vol. ii., p. 336. 

t M'Crie's Memoirs of Veitch, &c, p. 295. M'Crie's Sketches of Scottish Church 
History, 2d edition, p. 420. 



DUCHESS OF ROTHES. 205 

and brought a minister, so that they seldom wanted a sermon on 
the Lord's day."* In attending these " seditious meetings" and 
" rendezvouses of rebellion," as they were stigmatized by the 
privy council, the duchess incurred the heavy penalties under 
Avhich they were interdicted ; but, like others of the ladies of the 
members of the government, who were led by curiosity or piety 
to field-conventicles, she was overlooked, the council not deem- 
ing it prudent to carry the persecution into the bosom of their 
own families. The leniency which the duke of Rothes exor- 
cised toward these field-meetings in Fife, it is believed, was ow- 
ing in no small degree, to their being favored and countenanced 
by the duchess. On one occasion when forty individuals, who 
had been apprehended for a conventicle in Glenvale, were brought 
before him in Leslie, and he was asked what was to be done 
with them : " Put them," said he, " in Bailie Walker's back room/ 
the place they all like so well." The bailie was a religious man, 
and meetings for social prayer and conference were often held in 
his back room. When asked what further orders he had to give 
respecting them, the duke answered, " Give them plenty of meat 
and drink, and set them about their business in the morning. "f He 
knew that Glenvale was a favorite place of resort for his own 
lady, and that these poor individuals brought before him had done 
nothing to merit punishment, were guilty in fact of holding no 
principles, and following no practices, for which she might not 
have been equally impeached. 

An evidence of the tender-hearted sympathy of the duchess 
with the persecuted covenanters is furnished in the following 
anecdote : Archbishop Sharp, having on one occasion come to 
dine with the duke, complained to him at dinner that two of his 
tenants, David and James Walker, were keepers of conventicles. 
This complaint the archbishop strongly and vehemently urged, 
though the duchess, of whose attachment to the presbyterian in- 
terest he could not be ignorant, was present ; for deference to her 
feelings was overborne by his inveterate malignity against these 
worthy men. The duke, who expressed his surprise at this in- 
formation, said, that " he should take an effectual course with 
them, and see them both stringed."^ The archbishop insisted 
that he should not forget them, for they were incendiaries through 
all Fife ; upon which the duke gave orders to his man-servant, 
who was standing at his back, to send immediately to the town 
of Leslie, in the neighborhood of which they lived, and bring 

* Wodrow MSS., vol. xxxiii., folio, No. 143. 

t M'Crie's Memoirs of Veitch, &c, p. 295. X That is, hanged. 

18 



206 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

them down to him after dinner, promising to the archbishop that 
they should gl ve the government no further trouble To this dis- 
course, the duchess, though it appears she made no remarks, lis- 
tened with great pam-the two men, who were eminent for piety, 
being her Christian friends, for whom she entertained a high es- 
teem ; nor had she much respect for Sharp, who besides being 
first a traitor to the church of Scotland, and then its persecutor, 
had injured her father for being a more honest man than himself 
It may therefore be easily believed, as Wodrow observes, that 
this spoiled my lady duchess's dinner." She was aware that 
the duke, who was ambitious of place and power, had, to secure 
tne favor of Sharp whose influence at court was great, and to 
keep the prelatic clergy at his devotion, done acts of violence 
which he was not naturally inclined to commit ; and was therefore 
-aa-aid that in the present instance, to gratify the prelate, he would 
subject these good men to persecution. Her fears were, however 
happily disappointed. The two nonconformists immediately came 
down to he palace at -Leslie. After dinner, the duke accom- 
panied Sharp to his coach ; and, on being again reminded by the 
prelate not to spare the two delinquents, he told him "thev 
were come and assured him he should not fail to handle them 
severely. But on his coming up stairs and calling for them, he 
simply asked them, m a friendly way, the prices of the markets 
what grain it was best for him to sow in such and such parts of 
his lands about Leslie, and similar questions, after which he dis- 
missed them without any mark of displeasure or asking them a 
single question in reference to the subject as to which he had 
professedly brought them to his house. "The duchess," savs 
W odrow, retired from dinner in deep concern for the men and 
gave orders to a servant to bring them in to her, when the duke 
parted with them, by a back gallery. Accordingly they came. 
Ihe duchess was all in tears, and almost trembling, asked what 
had passed Hiey told her, < Nothing but kindness.' Whether 
this was to be attributed to the duchess's prayers in their behalf, 
or to the duke s natural temper, who was not inclined to violence 
I am not to determine ; but the fact is certain "* 

The duchess was greatly tried in her domestic life. Beside 

bemg connected with the persecuting government of Charles, 

the duke was unprincipled and profligate, devoting himself 

without either restraint or decency, to all the pleasures of 

was Wodrow's mformer. He received this anecdote from the ducheVs Send? ' 



DUCHESS OF ROTHES. 207 

wine and women."* " He gave himself," says Fountainhall, 
" great liberty in all sort of pleasures and debaucheries, particu- 
larly with Lady Anne, sister of the first duke of Gordon, whom 
he took along with him in his progress through the country, with 
hat and feather ; and by his bad example affected many of the 
nobility and gentry."! But trying as this was to the duchess, 
the admirable prudence and gentleness which marked her temper 
and conduct under it all, so impressed the duke as to make him 
ashamed of the manner in which he was treating her. " It was," 
says Kirkton, " confidently reported that his infamous converse 
with Lady Anne Gordon touched his own conscience so much, 
that one day, being under the dint of his own conviction, and 
reflecting upon his misbehavior toward his worthy lady (whom 
he could. not but admire), he threw all the wretched love-tokens 
his miss had given him into the fire, upon suspicion and fear he 
Avas detained her captive by the power of witchcraft, as very 
many said he was. "I 

Still more calculated to excite in the mind of the duchess the 
most poignant distress, were the circumstances connected with 
his death. His days may be said to have been shortened by his 
intemperance. So strong was his constitution that he could out- 
drink two or three sets of drunkards in succession, and after the 
greatest excesses an hour or two of sleep so completely recruit- 
ed him, that he could go about business without any apparent 
disorder in either body or mind. This could not always last ; it 
ultimately undermined his vigorous constitution, producing such 
diseases of stomach, that when not hot within, and full of strong 
drink, he had perpetual colics, so that he was always either 
sick or drunk. || He was seized with his last illness in Edin- 
burgh. On his death-bed his conscience was awakened ; and 
as he looked on his past life, and forward to a coming judgment, 
the horrors of despair settled on his soul. He sent for some of 
his lady's ministers — those men who, when entertained by her 
at Leslie house, were afraid to meet him in the days of his ro- 
bust health — he sent for them now, that, if possible, they might 
minister relief to his troubled conscience. Two of them, Mr. 
John Carstairs, and Mr. George Johnston, who were then in 
Edinburgh, came to Holyrood house, where he lay ; and while 
they spoke to him freely of the sinfulness of his former ways, as 
fidelity demanded, true to their office, as messengers of peace, 



* Burnet's Own Times, vol. i., p. 175. 

t Fountaiuhall's Diary, quoted in Kirkton's History, by the editor, p. 204. 

t Kirkton's History, p. 212. || Burnet's Own Times, vol. i., p. 175. 



208 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

they told him that pardon and mercy were to be obtained through 
the blood of Jesus for the greatest sinners of Adam's race, even 
at the eleventh hour. Mr. Carstairs, a man unequalled in his day 
in the gift of prayer, engaged in that exercise; and so weighty 
and affecting were his sentences, as to draw tears from almost 
every one present. But all availed not to pacify the conscience 
of the dying nobleman. He said to Carstairs, " We all thought 
little of what that man Cargill did in excommunicating us, but I 
find that sentence binding upon me now, and it will bind to eter- 
nity." The duke of Hamilton, who witnessed the scene, deeply 
moved, said, " When in health, we hunt, and persecute these 
men, but when dying, we call for them : this is melancholy 
work !" The dying duke expired at Holyrood house, on the 27th 
July, 1681, in the 51st year of his age. His funeral 'obsequies 
were performed with unusual pomp. His body was first pri- 
vately brought up from Holyrood house to the high church of St. 
Giles, accompanied with a train of coaches ; thence it was con- 
ducted, with the greatest magnificence, to the royal chapel of 
Holyrood house, by a numerous procession, the order of which 
is given by Arnot in his history of Edinburgh.* From the chapel 
of Holyrood house, it was next conveyed, with the same funereal 
pomp, to Leith, thence it was transported to Burntisland ; and 
the day after, it was met by the gentlemen of the county of Fife 
(of which he was high sheriff), by whom it was accompanied to 
tbe family burying-place at Leslie. The body was laid in the 
grave with sound of open trumpets, and the honors placed above 
the grave. This superfluity of display was common during the 
reign of Charles II. at the funerals of the great. Under that 
reign it was a matter of policy, in prosecution of the designs of 
the government for the establishment of absolute power, to en- 
courage every circumstance Avhich could mark the distinction of 
ranks, and hence the nobility and gentry gratified their vanity 
not only by the splendor of their retinues, but also by the extrava- 
gant pomp with which they conducted the funerals of their de- 
parted friends, as if they could thus keep up the distinctions of 
rank and elevated station after death had levelled, them in the 
dust. 

" Sorry pre-eminence of high descent 
Above the vulgar born.' : t 

* Pp. 168, 611. 

t To such an extent, however, did this foolish vanity and absurd extravagance 
proceed, that the parliament which met at Edinburgh, "September 13, 168], passed 
an " act restraining the exorbitant expenses of marriages, baptisms, and burials." — 
See the acts of the parliament of Scotland. 



DUCHESS OF ROTHES. 209 

The duchess had to the duke, two daughters, Lady Margaret, 
and Lady Christian. Lady Margaret, the eldest, became on her 
father's death, countess of Rothes, having inherited his extensive 
property in the counties of Aberdeen, Elgin, Fife, Forfar, Inver- 
ness, Kincardine, and Perth, and the earldom of Rothes, but not 
his other titles of duke of Rothes, marquis of Ballinbreich, &c, 
Avhich, being limited to the heirs male of his body, became ex- 
tinct at his death. She was married, in 1674, to Charles, fifth 
earl of Haddington, the marriage contract being dated the 7th of 
October that year. The second daughter, Lady Christian, was 
married first to James, third marquis of Montrose, to whom she 
had issue, and afterward, in 1687, to Sir John Bruce, of Kinross, 
baronet, to whom she had no children.* 

Amid all her domestic trials, the duchess found much comfort 
in her children, who, following her instructions and example, 
adorned the high stations they filled, and were patterns to their 
sex. Her eldest daughter, in particular, who succeeded the 
duke, a lady of a cultivated understanding, and of much practical 
wisdom, was almost unequalled in her day for the depth of her 
piety, and the extent of her beneficence. 

Among the nonconforming ministers whom the duchess be- 
friended and patronized, was Mr. Alexander Wedderburn, one 
of the most popular ministers of his day, who was ejected from 
Forgan, in Fife, after the Restoration, and who subsequently be- 
came indulged minister at Kilmarnock. Previous to his death, 
which took place about the close of October, 1678,f this excellent 
minister, having consented to the posthumous publication of a series 
of sermons which he had delivered upon 2 Samuel xxiii. 5, and 
which, after his death, were published partly from short-hand 
notes taken by some of the hearers, and partly from his own 
notes, it was his desire that the volume should be dedicated to 
the duchess. But as before its publication she had been removed 
by death, Mr. Wedderburn's widow, Helen Turnbull, dedicated 
it to the duchess's daughter, " the truly noble Margaret, countess 
of Rothes," which she was induced to do not only in considera- 
tion of the Christian excellence of that lady, but also from respect 
to the memory of her sainted mother ; and as a memorial of the 
duchess we now quote it. " Madam," says Mrs. Wedderburn, 

* Douglas's Peerage, vol. ii., p. 432. 

t The illness which issued in his death was brought on by a thrust he received 
from the butt of the musket of a Highlander during the invasion of the west by the 
Highland host in 1678, at the time when he was interceding with these savages to 
spare the town of Kilmarnock, which they were resolved to plunder. His last ill- 
ness continued about four months. 

18* 



210 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

" before that pious and eminent person, the duchess of Rothes, 
your ladyship's renowned mother, was by death removed, I de- 
signed, according to the intention of my husband (who is now 
entered into the joy of his Lord), to dedicate this part of his 
labors to her grace. And now, when these papers, by advice 
of faithful and godly ministers, are to be exposed to public view, 
I judged it my duty to pay that respect to her grace's memory as 
to prefix your ladyship's name thereunto (which, no doubt, if my 
husband were alive, he himself would have done), which 1 the more 
confidently adventure upon, as that I know your ladyship to be the 
lively portraiture of the graces and virtues of your noble and now 
glorified mother, and to be of such wisdom and prudence, humil- 
ity and s<^f'-denial, as to excuse anything of unsuitableness that 
may be in this for one of my station and sex." 

A few brief notices of Margaret, countess of Rothes, may form 
an appropriate sequel to the preceding sketch of her mother. 
Crawford describes her as " a lady of incomparable piety and 
goodness ;"* and Wodrow speaks of her as that " excellent lady 
who scarce had a parallel for religion, and everything good, in 
her age."f Having embraced the same religious sentiments as 
her mother, she was a friend to the persecuted presbyterians, of 
wbich the government were well aware, and as an instance of 
the arts resorted to for depriving the sufferers of shelter from 
every quarter, it may be mentioned that the privy council, who 
found sheriff courts a powerful means of carrying on the perse- 
cution, persuaded that on succeeding her father, she would ap- 
point a sherilT depute for Fife, who would befriend the sufferers, 
had recourse to a most dishonorable expedient, in order to deprive 
her of the power of appointing a substitute to hold such a court 
in her name. On the 6th of October, 1681, the privy council 
"order intimation to be made to her by the earl of Haddinjrton, 
that she can not hold any sheriff court, nor any in her name, 
until she take the test." " The parliament in one of their acts," 
says Wodrow, " as we have seen, except the heirs of the duke 
from some hardships of this nature,]: yet the council urge this 
excellent lady with this oath, as what they knew she would never 

* Crawford's Peerage of Scotland, p. 430. t Wodrow's History, vol. iii., p. 300. 

X Wodrow refers to tlie act concerning public debts, passed September 17, 1681, 
discharging such noblemen, barons, and burgesses, as " during the time of the lata 
troubles and rebellion, did give their bonds for several great sums of money," "of 
the said debts and bonds granted thereupon," upon condition of their taking the test, 
" excepting always the heirs, executors, and successors of the deceased duke of 
Rothes, late lord-chancellor, who, in respect of his eminent loyalty and service to 
his majesty, are hereby absolutely exonered and discharged of the said debts, with- 
out necessity of taking the aforesaid test, upon the account aforesaid, alleuarly.'' 



DUCHESS OF ROTHES. 211 

take, that the offices might fall into the managers' hands."* The 
council succeeded in their design. Both the countess and the 
earl of Haddington, her husband, refused to take the test. Ac- 
cordingly the sheriffdom of Fife was lodged in the hands of the 
earl of Balcarres, who, in that same year, appointed Alexander 
Malcolm sheriff depute of that county, a man who proved as se- 
vere a presser of conformity as the government could desire, 
subjecting such as refused to take the test to severe oppression 
by fines, imprisonment, and other kinds of suffering.! 

Wodrow, in his Analecta, under the year 1730, has preserved 
the following memorial of this lady : "I am told that the late 
duchess or countess of Rothes, was one of the most extraordinary 
persons for religion and good sense, and eminent acts of charity, 
that was in the last age ; that her life, could it be recovered, would 
make a beautiful figure in our biography. I have little hope of 
recovering it. In the late dear years 1697 and 1G98", she was 
remarkable for her charity. She distributed many bolls of meal 
among the poor every week, and it was calculated that she dealt 
out most of the yearly rent of the estate, that way. She had a day 
in the week, Friday, I think, when sick and indisposed persons 
came to her ; and she spoke with them, and gave them medicines 
gratis ; and some cheats, pretending to be objects of charity, she 
discovered, and severely punished them. She was most intimate 
with John Archer, Alexander's father, and many eminent Chris- 
tians in that neighborhood. She was eminent in prayer and 
wrestling, and had many singular answers of prayer. It's a pity 
so little about her can now be recovered." J 

The countess died on the 20th of August, 1700. Sir James 
Stewart, lord advocate of Scotland, after the revolution, says, in 
a letter to Principal William Carstairs, dated August 22, 1700, 
" The good countess of Rothes died Tuesday last, much regretted 
by all, and very deservedly." || She was succeeded by her eldest 
son, John, seventh earl of Rothes, who, like his predecessors for 
at least four preceding generations, was distinguished for the ex- 
cellence of his Christian character. He died in 1722, in the 
prime of life, in the full assurance of faith. A few hours before 
his departure, he called his children one by one, and took fare- 
well of each of them, speaking to each in particular, and to them 
all for nearly two hours, with the greatest seriousness and solidity, 
recommending religion to them as what alone would avail them, 



* Wodrow's History, vol. iii., p. 300. t Ibid., vol. iii., p. 390. 

f Vol. iv., p. 172. " || Cavstairs's State Papers, p. 625. 



212 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

when about to pass from time into eternity.* The well-known 
Colonel Blackadder, who was present with him at the last, says 
that he never witnessed so Christian, calm, and courageous a 
death. The colonel drew up an account of his death-bed scene, 
which is printed from the Wodrow MSS., in the Christian In- 
structor for November, 1825. 

In the preceding notices of the duchess of Rothes, of her pred- 
ecessors and descendants, it is interesting and instructive to see 
piety passing downward from parents to children for five succes- 
sive generations. This we are no doubt to trace to the sovereign 
grace of God, for genuine religion is not transmitted from parent 
to child, as a healthy constitution is transmitted. But it is also 
to be traced to the instrumentality of parents, and particularlv of 
religious mothers, in the godly upbringing of their children. The 
duchess of Rothes's mother, the duchess herself, her daughter 
and her son, all enjoyed the benefit of the religious instructions, 
the persevering prayers, and the holy example of godly mothers. 
To the pious endeavors of both parents to instil the principles of 
piety into the minds of their children, God has annexed a special 
blessing ; but it may be expected in particular that the labors of 
Christian mothers in this good work will be followed by the hap- 
piest effects. From their offspring beintf in infancy constantly 
under their care, and afterward in childhood and youth more 
frequently in their society than in that of the other parent, mothers 
have a more powerful influence than fathers in forming their 
character ; and how often, as must be known to all who are but 
slightly acquainted with Christian biography, have those who 
have been distinguished in their day for piety and extensive use- 
fulness in the church and in the world, had to frace their piety 
and their usefulness to the instructions, counsels, and admonitions, 
they had received, in their first and more tender years, from their 
God-fearing mothers ! 

* Wodrow's Correspondence, vol. ii., p. 641. 



COUNTESS OF CRAWFORD. 213 

LADY MARY JOHNSTON, 

COUNTESS OF CRAWFORD. 

Lady Mary Johnston was the eldest daughter of James, earl 
of Annandale and Hartfell, by his wife Lady Henrietta Douglas, 
daughter of William, first marquis of Douglas, by his second wife, 
Lady Mary Gordon. She was married at Leith, on the 8th of 
March, 1670, to William, sixteenth earl of Crawford, and second 
earl of Lindsay, the son of John, earl of Crawford and Lindsay, 
of whom some notices have already been given,* and brother to 
the duchess of Rothes, the subject of the preceding sketch.! Her 
husband, like his parents, was a nonconformist, and great defer- 
ence was paid to him by the presbyterians. On this account he 
was, throughout the period of the persecution, a marked man; 
and, from the danger to which he was exposed, he once intended 
to go abroad, though he never went, but lived in retirement till 
the revolution, which brought him deliverance and honor. J 

The early education and family connections of this lady tended 
to prejudice her mind against the suffering covenanters. But 
her marriage into a family distinguished at once for their warm 
attachment to that persecuted body, and for personal piety, was 
followed by a great change upon both her personal character and 
religious sentiments. She became, at one and the same time, a 
genuine Christian and a true blue presbyterian. The instrument 
of effecting this change upon her was Mr. John Welsh, a minister 
almost unequalled in the times of persecution, for the Christian 
intrepidity with which he jeoparded his life on the mountains and 
in the moors of Scotland, in his ardent and indefatigable zeal to 
proclaim to his fellow-countrymen the unsearchable riches of 
Christ, and whose intrepid labors of love were blessed by the 
Spirit of God for turning multitudes from disobedience to the 
wisdom of the just. 

* See pp. 199, 200. t Douglas's Peerage, vol. i., pp. 74, 387. 

t He was appointed by King William, president of the parliament, a commissioner 
of the treasury, and one of the commission for settling the government of the church. 
He was a man of great political sagacity, and the most active agent in effecting the 
overthrow of prelacy at the revolution. His correspondence during that eventful 
period has been printed in the " Melville and Levin Papers." " His letters," says 
Lord Lindsay, who is not disposed to overrate his merits, " bear the stamp of 
burning and enthusiastic sincerity, while in point of taste, though abounding in 
scriptural images, they are unusually graceful and free from cant, and the impression 
they leave is more favorable to him than might have been expected." — Lord Lind- 
Bay's Lives of the Lindsays, vol. ii., p. 174. 



214 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

In the beginning of the year 1674 — the first three months of 
which, as we have seen, were called " the Blink," from the little 
molestation then offered to the ejected ministers in holding con- 
venticles, whether in houses or in the fields* — Welsh went over 
from Edinburgh to Fife with his wife, where he spent about six 
weeks in preaching, none presuming either to pursue him from 
Edinburgh, or to lay hands on him in Fife, not even Sharp, who 
had his residence in that part of the country, and who of all others 
most thirsted for his blood. f During that period Welsh had large 
meetings both on the sabbath-day and on week-days, at which 
many of the gentry, attracted by the weight of his character and 
by his homely but powerful eloquence, were often present ; the 
most of whom seemed to be impressed by the word, and favora- 
bly disposed to the work in which he was engaged.^ It was at 
this time that Lady Crawford had an opportunity of hearing him 
preach for the first time, in the neighborhood of her own resi- 
dence, Struthers house, || and his discourse, accompanied by the 
influence of the Divine Spirit, was the means of turning her 
from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God. 
From that day she became an altered person ; the pride of her 
heart was humbled, so that, like Mary in the gospel, she sat at 
Jesus's feet, a teachable disciple, listening to his voice, and in 
the whole of her subsequent deportment she exhibited the living 
marks of a child of God. Now, indeed, she had not many years 
to live, but during the brief course allotted to her on earth, she 
exemplified in an eminent degree the power of vital godliness. 
In her character were combined the devotion of the saint and the 

* For the reasons of this temporary cessation from persecution, see p. 182. 

t " None was so busy as Mr. John Welsh, who this spring [1674], made a peram- 
bula'ion over Fife, and there, in vacant churches, and sometimes in the fields at 
Gleuvale, at Duraqtihair, and other places, gathered sometimes armies together, for 
which the gentry and people both smarted very sore." — Kirkton's History, p. 344. 

t Blackadder's Memoirs, MS. copy. The same writer says, " He [Welsh] was 
attended from place to place with companies of gentlemen and others, with great 
respect and applause." " The council," says Kirkton, " set a price upon Mr. Welch's 
head, and for that he never rode without a guard of horsemen, sometimes more, 
sometimes less, but seldom exceeding the number of ten horsemen." — Kirkton's His- 
tory, p. 380. 

|| Struthers, or as it is called in some old papers, Auchter uther-Sfruther, was for- 
merly the seat of the earls of Crawford. It is now in ruins, and stands about two 
miles southwest from the village of Ceres, Fifeshire. Its towers and battlements 
gave it a venerable and a sort of warlike appearance ; but of this once splendid 
house there now exist very scanty remains. " The park around the house," says the 
old Statistical Account of Scotland, " -rrhich is enclosed with a stone wall, contains 
about two hundred acres of ground ; there are a good many trees in different places 
of the park, particularly some venerable beeches of a very large size." But in the 
new Statistical Account of Scotland, it is said that these " venerable beeches, have 
died or been cut down." 



COUNTESS OF CRAWFORD. 215 

resolution of the martyr. Previous to her hearing Welsh she 
attended the curates without scruple, but after that, no arguments 
and no menaces employed by her relatives could prevail upon 
her to go and hear them ; and she embraced every opportunity 
within her reach of attending field-conventicles. In her the per- 
secuted, the poor, and the suffering, found a sympathizing friend.* 
The vast change she had undergone, her relatives and acquaint- 
ances did not fail tq observe ; and her Christian friends were 
struck with the rapidity with which she advanced in all the 
graces of the Spirit, outstripping many who had preceded her in 
their entrance on the Christian course. Her husband, who loved 
her with the tenderest affection, was improved in character by 
the imitation of her virtues, and encomiums upon her worth were 
extorted even from enemies. 

Of this lady, Mr. John Blackadder has preserved an interest- 
ing memorial in his " Memoirs, written by Himself." After nar- 
rating Welsh's visit to Fife, in the beginning of the year 1674, 
and referring to the " many memorable effects of the power and 
wisdom of God, manifested at that time," by the labors of that 
eminent minister, of which he gives some examples, he says : 
" Among others, I must notice, to the commendation of the grace 
of God, that instance concerning Countess Crawford, then called 
Lady Lindsay ,f daughter to the earl of Annandale, by Duke Ham- 
ilton's sister (whose education was more likely to have alienated 
her from that way, than to ingratiate it to her), she coming to one 
o£ these great meetings at Duraquhair, near Cupar, and near to 
her own house : she by a special cast of God's power, had been 
induced among others to come forth one of these great sabbaths 
at Duraquhair, where it was estimated there were about seven or 
eight thousand persons present, and much of the power of God 
appeared to the shaking the consciences, and awakening the 
hearts of the generality for the time, and leaving a lasting im- 
pression on others, among whom this truly honorable lady was 
one, who declared she was constrained to close with the offer 
that was made in that great day of the gospel ; which was made 
known to many by manifest fruits of piety, showed forth in all her 
walk as a Christian and dutiful yoke-fellow to her lord, who also 

* Mr. John Carstairs in a letter to the earl of Crawford, dated May 2, 1678, says, 
" I take it for granted your lordship's excellent lady and sister covet most the relief 
of Christ's oppressed interests, and that your endeavors therein will be most accept- 
able and satisfying, as I hope your brother's sweet lady also doeth." — Wodrow 
MSS., vol. lix., folio, No. 78. 

t Her husband was then only Lord Lindsay. He did not become Earl Crawford 
till his father's death, which took place in 1676. 



216 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

received good impressions of that day's work, and the like from 
her very report of the Lord's gracious presence and good she 
found to her soul that day ; which the writer hereof also had 
from herself, with great majesty and seriousness in the presence 
of her lord, who hath since also been helped to carry as a Chris- 
tian in the exercise of piety and righteousness (whereof he hath 
given a good proof in dispensing his estate, to pay his father's 
creditors,* having very little to himself), and steadfast soundness 
in the public cause of reformation, with as much tenderness, and 
keeping at a distance from all steps of defection, as many of 
whom more might have been expected, and that to this day. Af- 
ter the day of this lady's conversion to the Lord, and singular 
reformation, she could never be induced by all the insinuations 
and threats of her near and noble relations, to go back again to 
the prelatic preachers and their assemblies, or to countenance 
any of the prelates or curates as she had done, but frequented all 
occasions of preaching at these persecuted meetings she could 
conveniently win at. She lived and died endeavoring to adorn 
her profession by a conversation becoming the gospel ; even 
to the stopping the mouths of gainsayers. What is here declared 
as to this memorable instance and effect of the grace and power 
of Christ manifested to this lady, I am without fear of any man's 
disproving, beside many the like to others at these persecuted 
meetings, called by many in this degenerate generation unlawful 
conventicles."! 

Lady Crawford died in the year 1682, in the prime of life. 
This we learn from the epistle "dedicatory, prefixed by Mr. John 

* He made his nonentailed property responsible for payment of his father's debts 
" that," to use his own words, " the memory of so good a man, and so kind a father, 
might not suffer by the neglect of a son that owed all things to him in gratitude as 
well as duty.'' — Melville and Leven Papers, p. 259. Mr. John Carslairs, in his 
Epistle Dedicatory to Durham's Sermons on Isaiah liii., addressed to the earl of 
Crawlbrd, also speaks in commendation of his lordship's Christian and exemplary 
conduct, in '' Choosing rather contentedly and satisfiedly to be (if it so please the 
Lord, and O that it may not !) the last of that ancient and honorable family, than to 
be found endeavoring to keep it from sinking by any sinful and unwarrantable course, 
particularly by defrauding just creditors (though the debt was not of your lordship's 
own contracting), under whatever specious pretexts and advantages of law; where- 
of many make no bones, who, if they may keep up their superfluities, care not to 
ruin their friends engaging in suretyship for their debt, and to live on the substance 
of others."' Carstairs "adds, " With great satisfaction I notice how much your lord- 
ship makes it your business to follow your noble ancestors, in so far as they were 
' followers of Christ,' which many great men, even in the Christian world, alas ! 
do not much mind, not considering that it is true nobility, where God is the chief 
and top of the kin, and where religion is at the bottom ; and what renowned Ral- 
eigh saith, ' Hinc dictus nobilis qnasi pros aliis viitute notabilis ; and what another 
Baith, ■ Qui ab illustrium majorum splendida virtuta degenerarunt nobilia par- 
ienta sunt.' " 

t Blackadder's Memoirs, MS. copy ; see also Dr. Crichton's printed copy, p. 167 



COUNTESS OF CRAWFORD. 217 

Carstairs to Durham's sermons on Isaiah liii.* It is addressed 
" Unto all afflicted and cross-bearing serious Christians ; and 
more particularly, to the Right Honorable and Truly Noble Lord 
William, Earl of Crawford;" and is dated November 15, 1682. 
After adducing and illustrating a variety of reasons, why the 
people of God should " sweetly submit themselves to his will in 
all things, how cross soever to their own inclination," he says : 
" Let them all, my noble lord, prevail with your lordship in par- 
ticular, reverently to adore, silently to stoop unto, and sweetly 
to acquiesce in, the Lord's sovereign, holy, and wise ordering 
your many and various complicated trials ; and more especially 
his late removing your excellent lady, the desire of your eyes, 
the Christian and comfortable companion of your youth, by his 
stroke." In the same dedication, Carstairs bears testimony to 
the distinguished piety of this lady, in these words : " I am, my 
noble lord, the more easily prevailed with, and encouraged to 
address the dedication of these sermons to your lordship, more 
particularly when I remember ' the unfeigned faith that first 
dwelt in your grandmother,' as another Lois ; and in your mother, 
as another Eunice ;f and more lately in your own choice lady, 
who, as another beloved Persis, ' labored much in the Lord ;'f 
(and though she had but a very short Christian race, in which 
she was much encouraged by coming into your noble father's 
family, and her beholding how hard your blessed mother did run 
and press toward the mark, even when in the last stage, and 
turning in a manner the last stoop of her Christian course ; yet 
it was a very swift one, wherein she did quite outrun many that 
were in Christ long before her) ; all three ladies of honor, almost 
— if I need to say almost — Avithout parallels in their times, in the 
serious and diligent exercise of godliness, and patterns worthy 
to be imitated by others." Carstairs adds, "And [the same un- 
feigned faith dwells] I trust in your lordship also, yea, and in 
several others of your elder and younger noble relations ; for 
grace hath such a draught of souls amongst you, as it useth not 
often to have in societies of so noble extract, ' for not many noble 
are called/" 

The loss of this amiable and pious lady gave a severe shock 
to the feelings of the earl. Carstairs, who knew the intensity 
of his grief, addressed himself to the task of administering com- 
fort to his wounded heart. " Let all mutinous thoughts about 

* She had issue to the earl, three sons, the eldest of whom was John, seventeenth 
earl of Crawford, and a daughter. — Douglas's Peerage, vol. i., p. 387. 

t 2 Timothy, i. 5. J Romans, xvi. 12. 

19 



218 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

His dealings with you be silenced with, ' It's the Lord ;' let not 
too much dwelling on the thoughts of your affliction, to the filling 
of your heart still with sorrow, incapacitate you for, nor divert 
you from, humbly asking the Lord, what he aims at by all these 
dispensations, what he would have you to learn out of them, 
what he reproveth and contends for, what he would have you 
amending your hands in, and what he would have you more 
weaned, self-denied, and mortified in, and what he would have 
you a further length and a greater proficient in : He hath told 
you ' the truth, that these things are expedient for you ;' study to 
find them to be so in your experience. Sure he hath by them 
written in great, legible, and capital characters, yea even as with 
a sunbeam, vanity, emptiness, uncertainty, mutability, unsatis- 
factoriness, and disappointment upon the forehead of all creature 
comforts, and with a loud voice called your lordship, yet more 
seriously than ever, to seek after solid soul satisfaction in his 
own blessed and all-sufficient self." And after observing that 
" it is the scattering of our expectations and desires of happiness 
among other objects beside him, that breeds us all our disquiet, 
anxiety, and vexation ;" he adds, " There are some whom he 
loveth so well, that he can not (to speak so) find in his heart to 
see them thus to parcel out their affections, and to dote upon any 
painted imaginary happiness in creature-comforts ; and therefore, 
in design, he doth either very much blast them as to the expected 
satisfaction from them ; or quite remove them, that by making 
such a vacuity, he may make way for himself to till it, and hap- 
pily to necessitate the person, humbly, prayerfully, and believ- 
ingly, to put him to the filling of it. And it is a great vacuity 
that he, ' who fills heaven and earth,' can not fill ; a little of whose 
gracious presence, and manifested special love, can go very far 
to fill up the room that is made void, by the removal of the choi- 
cest and most desirable of all earthly comforts and enjoyments. 
Happy they, who, when they lose a near and dear relation or 
friend, or any idol they are fond of, are helped of God to make 
Jesus Christ, as it were, succeed to the same as its heir, by taking 
that loss as a summons to transfer and settle their whole love on 
him, the object incomparably most worthy of it, as being ' alto- 
gether lovely,' or ' all desires !' Cant. v. 1G." 

The earl afterward married for his second wife Lady Henrietta 

Seton, only daughter of Charles, second earl of Dunfermline, by 

his wife Lady Mary Douglas, third daughter of William, earl of 

Morton.* She was the relict of William, fifth earl of Wigton, to 

* Douglas's Peerage, vol. i., p. 482. 



COUNTESS OF CRAWFORD. 219 

•whom she was married at Dalgety in September, 1670, whom 
she lost by death on the 8th of April, 1681, and to whom she 
had issue two sons and a daughter.* To the earl of Crawford 
she had a son and six daughters. 

Like his former countess, this lady was a woman of genuine 
piety, as well as of presbyterian principles ; and, like other ladies 
of nobility and honor, she had her own share in the sufferings of 
those evil times. She first suffered in her two sons by her first 
husband being taken from her and committed to a teacher to be 
educated in prelacy or popery ; and when she went to Edinburgh 
to complain to the government, and make application for having 
them restored to her, her complaint and request were disregarded. 
In a paper entitled "Grievances for Scotland, 1661 — 1688," the 
following is included as a grievance : " The threatening to take 
children from parents to breed them papists, and actually taking 
my Lord Wigton and his brother. My Lady Crawford, their 
mother, came over to Edinburgh, in great grief and perplexity, 
a few weeks before her delivery, but was harshly handled by 
the chancellor,! and on her soliciting the lords of council for re- 
covery of her children out of his hands, no man would open his 
mouth for her."! And yet this treatment of her children was in 
glaring violation of the law. There was indeed at that period 
a standing law against presbyterians being employed as chaplains 
or pedagogues in families, or as teachers in schools, or as pro- 
fessors in colleges, conformity to prelacy being an essential 
qualification for all such situations ; but to abstract children from 
their parents, and to commit them to teachers for the purpose 
of their being trained up in prelacy or popery, was warranted by 
no statute even at that time, when the throne was a throne of 
iniquity, and when mischief had been so extensively framed by 
law. After the accession of James VII. to the throne, so gloomy 
were the anticipations of this lady as to the future state of matters 
in Scotland, that she was very desirous of going abroad. In a 
letter to a friend, dated September 8, 1685, speaking of the con- 
siderations which induced him to leave Scotland, as well as of 
the difficulties in the way, the earl says : " The things that 
prompt me to go are, first, a passionate desire in a most dutiful, 
most affectionate, and singularly good wife, who is really dis- 
quieted with apprehensions of sad things that are coming on 

* Douglas's Peerage, vol. ii.. p. 637. t The earl of Perth. 

t Wodrow MSS., vol. xl., folio. No. 3. In another paper entitled " Grievances 
for Scotland," this grievance is thus stated : " The imposing of naughty persons to 
govern children, as one imposed on my Lord Wigton and his brother, who after be- 
trayed them to the chancellor." — Ibid., vol. xl., folio, No. 7. 



220 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

Scotland ; now, when I consider the coraposedness of her temper 
for ordinary, I have sometimes looked on this restlessness in her 
spirit to be gone, as a warning from God that I should retire."* 



BARBARA CUNNINGHAM, 

LADY CALDAVELL. 



Barbara Cunningham was descended from the Cunninghams 
of Cunninghamhead in Ayrshire, one of the most ancient and 
powerful cadets of the Glencairn family, which possessed at one 
time large properties in Lanarkshire, and even in Mid-Lothian, 
as well as in Cunningham, but which began to decline about the 
end of the seventeenth century.f Her ancestors early distin- 
guished themselves as warm promoters of the Reformation from 
popery. Her great-grandfather, William Cunningham of Cun- 
ninghamhead, who joined the lords of the congregation, and 
maintained with ardent zeal the cause for which they erected 
their standard, sat in the memorable parliament of August, 1560, 
which approved and ratified the confession of faith, and abolished 
the jurisdiction of the pope throughout the kingdom of Scotland. 
His name appears at the most important public document of the 
Scottish reformers, as at " Ane Contract of the Lords and Barons, 
to defend the Liberty of the Evangell of Christ," in 1560 ; at the 
Book of Discipline, which he subscribed January 27, 1561, as 
one of the members of the privy council ; and at the famous 
band for the support of the reformed religion, in 1562. He was 
a member of the assembly of 1565, which was so obnoxious to 
Queen Mary and the Roman catholics, and was one of five com- 
missioners sent to the queen by that assembly, with certain 
articles, — the first of which was that the mass and all papistical 
idolatry and jurisdiction should be universally abolished through- 
out the realm, — humbly desiring her to ratify and approve the 
same in parliament.^ Her father, Sir William Cunningham of 

* Wodrow's Hist, vol. iv., p. 513. t Robertson's Ayrshire Families, vol, i. p. 303. 

t Robertson's Ayrshire Families, vol. i., p. 305. Knox's History, Wodrow Society 
edition, vol. i., p. 366; and vol. ii., pp. 61, 258,349, 486. Robertson is mistaken 
when he says that the " laird of Cunningham," who was a member of the assembly 
of 1565, was Barbara Cunningham's great grand-uncle. John Cunningham, brother 
to her great-grandfather, William Cunningham. It was her greatgrandfather him- 
self, who was a member of that assembly. He died in January, 1576. 



LADY CALDWELL. 221 

Cunninghamhead, succeeded his father, John, about the year 
1607, and was created a baronet in 1627. He was twice mar- 
ried ; first, in 1619, to Elizabeth, daughter of Mr. Thomas Nic- 
olson, commissary of Aberdeen, by whom he had Sir William, 
who succeeded him,* and Barbara, the subject of this notice. 
He had several other children of this marriage, but they all died 
either unmarried or without issue. He married, secondly, Lady 
Margaret Campbell, daughter of Lord Loudon, but of this mar- 
riage there was no issse. He died about the year 1640. f 

Barbara Cunningham was married, in 1657, to William Muir 
of Caldwell ;| and hence by the courtesy of the time she was 
usually styled Lady Caldwell. This " honorable and excellent 
gentleman," as he is called by Wodrow, zealously adhered to the 
ministers ejected in 1662, and was among the first who left off 
attending the ministry of the intruded curates. On the ejectment 
of Mr. Hugh Walker, the minister of Neilston, from his charge, 
by the act of the privy council at Glasgow, in 1662, Muir of 
Caldwell, who resided in that parish, ceased to attend the parish 
church, for which he was in some danger of being involved in 
trouble. Mr. John Carstairs, in a letter to Lady Ralston, dated 
March 6, 1663, says, " The people here and in the parts about 
are likely to be sorely put to it, if the Lord do not graciously 
prevent ; they imprison some of them for not hearing both in this 
town and elsewhere. The Lord Cochrane is very zealous in this 
good cause. Some of Neilston parishioners are in prison at 
Paisley on that account, and Caldwell was cited by the lord- 
chancellor to appear before the council at Edinburgh, because he 
would not promise to hear afterward. He should have appeared 
yesterday, but he got the first day put by ; whether he will get 
his appearance shifted altogether, I know not. I heard (and it 
seems by that same zealous man's means) that some din was 
made to the lord-chancellor about Caldwell, Dunlop, and the 
laird's || keeping meetings together at Paisley. Some were 
afraid the chancellor would have called for the laird, but I have 
heard nothing since ; it's like it will evanish and settle down 

* His son, Sir William, who succeeded him, like his daughter, Barbara, suffered 
not a little during the persecution, as we learn from Wodrow's History. Besides 
being fined by Middleton's parliament in 1662, above .£200 sterling, he was impris- 
oned for several years in Stilling castle. He died in 1670. 

t Robertson's Ayrshire Families, vol. i., pp. 306-308. 

t Fountainhall's Decisions of the Lords of Session, &c, vol. ii., p. 558. William 
had succeeded his brother James, who died without issue, in 1654. Crawford's 
History of Renfrewshire, Robertson's edition, p. 307. 

|| The laird of Ralston. 

19* 



222 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

again."* Lady Caldwell, being of similar ecclesiastical princi- 
ples with her husband, no doubt acted in a similar maimer. 

The sufferings of this lady in the cause of religion and liberty, 
may be said to have commenced in the year 1666, after the un- 
successful attempt of the covenanters at Pentland hills. Her 
husband and a few gentlemen in the west, having gathered to- 
gether a small company of horsemen, amounting to about fifty, 
intended to join the covenanters under Colonel Wallace, who 
were then near Edinburgh ; but being informed, after proceeding 
a short way on their journey, that General Dalziel was between 
them and their friends, they dispersed. Caldwell, who was cap- 
tain of that little band, soon after found it necessary to provide 
for his safety by flight, and concealing himself for some time, he 
succeeded in getting safely over to Holland, where, like many 
others of his expatriated countrymen, he found a secure retreat, 
but from which he never returned to his native land. Mean- 
while he was prosecuted by his majesty's advocate, before the 
lords justiciar}' for high treason, simply because he had been on 
the road to join those in arms ; and on the 16th of August, 1667, 
being found guilty of treason by a jury in his absence, he was 
sentenced to undergo capital punishment, and to be demeaned as 
a traitor, when he should be apprehended, and all his lands, ten- 
ements, annual rents, offices, titles, tacks, dignities, steadings, 
rooms, possessions, goods, and gear whatsoever, were declared 
to be forfeited to his majesty's u^e.f On the 12th of October, 
the privy council appointed James Dunlop, of Househill, to uplift 
Muir of Caldwell's rents for the year 1667, and bygone terms 
since the rebellion, and in future years, and to take an exact in- 
ventory of his whole movable goods and gear. His excellent 
estate, it is said, was at this time promised to General Dalziel, 
as a reward to the general for his success in suppressing the 
Pentland insurrection. It was not, however, actually gifted to 
him till July 11, 1670, when Charles granted in his favor a char- 
ter, under the great seal of the kingdom of Scotland, in due form, 
disponing to him, his heirs and assignees whatsoever, in perpe- 
tuity, the lands of Muir of Caldwell ; and every means was taken 

* Wodrow MSS., vol. xlv., 8vo, No. 52. 

t These proceedings were unquestionably illegal ; for " all processes of forfeiture 
before the justice court, in absence, were contrary to the act 90th, parliament 11, 
James VI.'' — Mnrison's Dictionary of the Decisions of the court of Session, p. 4695. 
The government, w 11 aware of this, had recourse to an expedient to secure them- 
selves, and give validity to these proceedings. With this view, an act of parlia- 
ment was passed, post facto, in 1669, ratifying these forfeitures, anil declaring them 
legal where it is for rising in arms and perduellion. — Wodrow's History, vol. ii., p. 
140. Fountainhall's Decisions, vol. ii., p. 558. 



LADY CALDWELL. 223 

to render the gift secure. On the 22d of August, 1670, an act 
of parliament was passed, ratifying the royal grant, and giving 
validity to all steps taken to secure the estate to him and his 
heirs m pcrpctuum ; and On the 8th of October, that same year, 
he was infefted in the estate.* 

These proceedings against Muir of Caldwell, it is obvious, 
could not but deeply strike against Lady Caldwell. By the sen- 
tence of forfeiture pronounced upon him, she, though not the 
object avowedly aimed at, suffered in fact as much as he suffered 
himself. It affected the temporal comfort of herself and her chil- 
dren as much as it affected his. While he remained lurking in 
the country, she had to endure the anxiety arising from the dan- 
ger to which he was exposed, of falling into the hands of the 
government; and during that time, or after he had made his es- 
cape to Holland, she suffered, previous to joining him, many 
hardships at home. The work of spoliation by Dalziel and his 
associates was then going on at the house and on the property 
of Caldwell, under her own eye. Of the extent to which the 
work was carried, some idea may be formed from a list of the 
losses she had sustained during the persecution, contained in the 
libel in the action she and her daughter brought against the 
grandson of Dalziel, before the court of session, after the revolu- 
tion, claiming reparation. This list enumerates the loss of 
" thirty-six milk and yield cows, at 20 lbs. per piece, which be- 
longed to William Mure of Caldwell, and were in his own pos- 
session in the year 1666 ; a great gelding, worth 50 lbs. ster- 
ling ; four other horses at 100 lbs. per piece ; together with the 
whole growth of the mains of Caldwell, the said crop 1666, both 
corn and fodder, to the value of 2,000 merks ; fifty bolls of meal 
lying in the girnels at the said time, at 10 merks per boll ; the 
whole plenishing, utensils, and domicils, to the value of 3,000 
merks ; three terms rent preceding Martinmas, 1667, of the said 
estate of Caldwell, extending to 10,500 merks intromited with, 
by the said General Thomas Dalziel, before he obtained the gift 
of Caldwell's forfeiture ; three hay-stacks standing in the corn- 
yard of the said mains of Caldwell, at 100 merks per piece ; the 
whole growth of little mains, which was in the Lady Caldwell's 
elder,! her own hands, with the corn and fodder, and a hay 
stack, extending to the value of 550 lbs. Scots."! In the same 

* Proceedings of parliament, February 20, 1707, in Acts of the Parliament of 
Scotland, vol. xi., p, 103. 

t William Muir of Caldwell's mother. 

X Proceedings of parliament, February 20, 1707, in Acts of the Parliament of 
Scotland, vol. xi., Appendix. 



224 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

document, it is stated that General Dalziel at Martinmas, 1666, 
intromitted with and took away from Lady Caldwell the furniture 
of the house of Caldwell. 

At last Lady Caldwell w^ent over to Holland to join her hus- 
band, who, it appears, had taken up his residence in Rotterdam. 
Whatever might be her outward temporal circumstances while in 
Holland, she and her husband were protected in their life and 
property ; they w T ere allowed, without restriction, to worship God 
according to the dictates of their conscience ; and they enjoyed 
a select and congenial society in those excellent ministers and 
laymen, with their wives, who, from similar causes, had been 
under the necessity of taking shelter in that country, from the 
fury of persecution'. Both of them, as we learn from the corre- 
spondence of that period, were, during their exile, very highly 
esteemed by these refugees. Robert M' Ward not only describes 
Muir of Caldwell as a man of great intelligence and remarkable 
for the elegance and felicity of language with which he expre seed 
himself on ecclesiastical and religious subjects, but assigns him 
the first place in his day among the pious gentlemen of Scotland. 
"As a companion," says he, "we had but one Caldwell among 
all the gentlemen I knew or yet know in Scotland."* And 
speaking of Lady Caldwell, he says, " Who did also cheerfully 
choose to be his fellow exile and companion in tribulation, as she 
desired to be in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ."! 

But she had not resided long in Holland when she was afflicted 
with the loss of her husband, who died at Rotterdam, on Wednes- 
day the 9th of February, 1670, his death, as was believed, having 
been hastened by the grief he felt on account of the calamitous 
state of the church in his native country. She had, however, 
under this trial the satisfaction of reflecting that she had been able 
to attend him under his last illness, and of witnessing the peace 
of mind, and the hopes of eternal glory, which sustained and 
cheered him on the bed of death. His dying words were noted 
down by Mr. Robert M'Ward, who observes that, as "he uttered 
them at several times during his few days' sickness, and as they 
were gathered from the memories of some gracious persons who 
were present, it will not be expected that they can be set down 
altogether in that order, liveliness and elegancy of phrase (wherein 
he had a peculiar happiness), as they were spoken by him." 
Referring to the cause of his banishment, Caldwell said, " 1 am 
in perfect peace and quiet of mind. There is no inconsistency 
between the obeying cf God and man. Help, O Lord ! we can 

* Wodrow MSS., vol. lviii., folio, No 74. t Ibid., vol. lxviii., folio, No. 23. 



LADY CALDWELL. 225 

have no liberty but what is clogged (as we apprehend) with great 
slavery. If we can not get living in the world like men, let us be 
helped to die like men, in the avowing of the truth of our God." 
He also said, "King Charles, we are content to give thee all 
thine own ; but do not, may not, give thee that which is only due 
unto King Jesus, and unto none else." On another occasion he 
said, "I have forsaken all for thee, O Father, Son, and blessed 
Spirit ! to whom be praise for ever and ever." But that it might 
not be supposed that he built on this his hopes of heaven, he 
added, " Jesus hath paid the price, he hath satisfied his Father's 
justice to the full ; I have laid all over on the cautioner, and he 
hath assured me that he hath undertaken all for me. He hath 
overcome, he hath overcome ; he will bruik his crown in spite 
of man and devils." He repeatedly bore testimony to the worth 
of his wife. One time, on his desiring her to be called for, and 
it being told him that being very sick, she had lain down to rest, 
he said, " Tell her that she and I shall be in heaven for ever and 
ever, and there we shall eat angels' food." " At another time, 
being strongly assaulted by the tempter, the Lord having given 
him great victory over him (as his gracious manner of dealing 
with him usually was), he cried out, ' I adjure thee, Satan, unto 
the bottomless pit, to go into everlasting chains, and to outer 
darkness, where there is weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth.' 
Then being a little silent, immediately he cried out, ' Trouble not 
Barbara Cunningham, for she is one of God's elect:' and again, 
and again, after a little silence, he cried, ' I say, tempt her not, 
for she is assuredly an elect vessel.' He said further, ' My faithful 
spouse, my faithful spouse, most faithful hast thou been unto me' 
(which was his ordinary expression to her, and of her), and did 
bless the Lord heartily that ever he saw her, and was joined unto 
her. He had often that expression after the most fierce and hor- 
rible assaults of Satan, ' Victory ! victory ! victory for evermore !'" * 
M'Ward pronounces upon him the following encomium : " And 
really the death of this precious gentleman is so much the more 
to be laid to heart and lamented, that as he was such a hopeful 
and promising instrument for promoting the interest of Christ's 
kingdom in his station and generation, and had upon mature de- 
liberation and choice, very singly and unbiasedly for Christ and 
the gospel's sake, quit and forgone a considerable and ancient 
inheritance, with his native country, and the fellowship of all his 
natural relations, except of his lady only — so in as far as could 
be judged by godly, judicious and sober men, in regard to a pro- 
* Wodrow MSS., vol. lxviii., folio, No. 23. 



226 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

curing means, the present sad condition of the church of Scot- 
land, and of the work of God therein, was the occasion of his 
death ; such a warm-hearted and kindly sympathizing son of Zion 
he was, and so sad a lift did he take of that which, alas! many 
of his mother's children walk too easily and lightly under; though 
the most accurate observer could never all the while of his so- 
journing as an exile abroad, nor along his sickness, hear him let 
so much as one word fall savoring the least dissatisfaction with, 
or unpleasant resentment of, his lot as to outward things."* And 
in a letter to Lady Caldwell, M'Ward says, " He had the care of 
the church, besides all the things that were without and within, 
so much upon his heart, that after he had lost houses and land-;, 
and country and friends, for the interest of his Master's glory, D s 
counting all these too little to have lost, and too low a significa- 
tion of that love to his Master, and that zeal of his house which 
did eat him up, he did, by choice, sacrifice his very life upon 
that interest, and became one of our greatest and most glorious 
martyrs."! 

On the death of her husband, Lady Caldwell returned to Scot- 
land. Upon her return she went, it would appear, to take up her 
residence at Caldwell house, and provided herself with new 
furniture. But in that mansion she was not permitted long to 
reside. The forfeited estate of Caldwell having been gifted to 
Dalziel a few months after her husband's death, she was com- 
pelled to quit Caldwell house, and to seek a home, as she best 
could find it, for herself and her four fatherless children, three of 
whom were daughters. And not content with her simple eject- 
ment, Dalziel took away the furniture of Caldwell house which 
she had procured, amounting to the value of 500 merks.ij: She 

* Wodrow MSS., vol. lxviii., f«»lio, No. 23. t Ibid., vol. lvii., folio, No. 7-1. 

X This is included in the enumeration of her losses during the p« rsecution, con- 
tained in the libel in the anion she and her daughter raised ngainst the grandson of 
Dalziel, before the court of sessions after the revolution. In the same document, the 
following losses are added, " Item, the sum of 12,000 merks received by the general, 
or his said son. or their factors, from the respective tenants of the lands lor tacks, in 
name of grassum, or entry at Whitsunday, 1671. Item, 6.000 merks received by 
them from the feuars and vassals of the said estate, for entering them and other 
casualties that occurred during that time. Item, 10,000 merks sustained of damage 
through the said pursuer's [Sir Thomas Dalziel's] father demolishing the tower and 
manor place of Caldwell the time foresaid, and of the bygone rents of the lands, and 
others life-rented by the said Barbara Cunningham, and others particularly libelled." 
From Decreet Absolvitor, Sir Thomas Dalziel of Binns against the Laird and Lady 
Caldwell, in Proceedings of Parliament. 20th February, 1707, in Acts of the Scot- 
tish Parliament. It may here be stated, that to make the most of Caldwell's estate, 
which he had unjustly acquired, Dalziel, quarrelling the tacks of the tenants as set 
beneath their true value, instituted a process against the tenants before the lords of 
session for removing them although they had standing tacks of their several rooms 
granted them long before the forfeiture for years to run. But the case was decided 



LADY CALDWELL. 227 

was besides deprived of all visible means of supporting herself 
and her children ; for though, by her marriage contract, an annual 
rent jointure, suitable to her rank, was secured to her from the 
lands of Caldwell, and she had been actually infefted in the estate 
prior to its forfeiture, yet, as we shall afterward see, she was 
deprived of this her just right. 

Greatly changed were her circumstances now from what they 
were during the first eight or nine years after her marriage, 
when she lived at Caldwell house in affluence, and day followed 
day without any cause for worldly care or anxiety. But she was 
not discouraged. She did not distrust in adversity the God whom 
she had trusted and served in prosperity. Confiding in his 
promises, she believed that he would provide for her and hers ; 
and possessing too much self-respect to be dependent for the 
means of subsistence on the bounty of others, she, with her vir- 
tuous children, set themselves diligently to the task of supporting 
themselves by the labor of their own hands. Nor was she ever 
burdensome to any person, not even to her nearest relations ; 
and if at times when reduced to straits, she was under the neces- 
sity of applying to them for a temporary loan of money, she after- 
ward thankfully and fully repaid it. Kind friends, whose sym- 
pathy was excited by her afflicted lot, and who were afraid she 
might be in pecuniary difficulties, repeatedly offered her money, 
but her noble spirit of independence shrunk from the acceptance 
of all such assistance. In reference to a sum of money which 
some friend in Holland had sent through Mr. Robert M'Ward of 
Rotterdam, to Mr. John Carstairs, to be communicated to her, 
Carstairs, in a letter to M'Ward, dated February 8, 1678, says : 
" The Lady Caldwell was impersuasible in that matter, though I 
showed her, at her desire, from whom it was, she having never 
taken from any, of which boasting she is resolved not to be de- 
prived, so long as she is able to live otherwise, which hath made 
me after this and some former essays, resolve not to trouble her. 
She desired me kindly to thank you in her name. I returned 
the money again to Mr. Watson. "f 

In this humble condition, Lady Caldwell, with her daughters, 
continued for many years, struggling for the means of subsist- 
ence, but contented and happy — happier far, indeed, than that 
barbarous and unprincipled man could possibly be, who now 

against hiin. On January 28, 1674, " The lords of session decerned that where the 
tenants were innocent, and did not concur in the crime, [of treason, for which Cald- 
well was forfeited,] and had but tacks of an ordinary endurance, they should stand 
valid for the years to run after the forfeiture." — Morison's Dictionary of Decisions, 
pp. 4685-4689. t Wodrow MSS., vol. lix., folio, No. 77. 



228 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

wrongfully possessed, and had full and unlimited dominion over 
the manor-house, the yards and orchards, the woods and mead- 
ows, throughout the liberties of Caldwell. To a woman of her 
independent temper of mind, it would be a high satisfaction to 
reflect that, though poor, she and her children were a burden to 
nobody. But she was encouraged and supported by nobler sen- 
timents and more Divine consolations. The losses and suffer- 
ings she had sustained had been endured in the cause of Christ 
and she did not regret having been called to undergo them 
in so good a cause. She accounted them her crown, her glorv 
bhe took joyfully the spoiling of her goods, knowing that she 
had in heaven a better and a more enduring substance. And in 
the meantime, she had experienced that in proportion as her suf- 
ferings for Christ abounded, her consolations in Christ did much 
more abound. This, in her estimation, was of greater value than 
the largest earthly revenue ; and the longer she lived, the more 
strongly was her heart inclined, whatever difficulties and tribu- 
lations might intervene and oppose, to « hold fast the confidence 
and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end." Such were the 
sentiments and feelings to which she gave expression in a letter 
to Colonel James Wallace, the friend of her husband This let- 
ter has not been preserved, but its import we learn from Colonel 
Wallace s reply, which, though without date, appears to have 
been written either in 1677 or 1678 ; and the portion of it illus- 
trative of the Christian character of Lady Caldwell may here be 
quoted. J 

" Elect Lady, and my Worthy and Dear Sister : Yours 
is come to my hand in most acceptable time. It seems that all 
that devils or men these many years have done (and that has not 
been little), against you to daunt your courage, or to make vou, 
m the avowing of your Master and his persecuted interests, to 
lower your sai s, has prevailed so little, that your faith and cour- 
age are upon the growing hand, an evidence, indeed, as to vour 
persecutors of perdition, but to you of salvation, and that of God 
It seems when you at first, by choice, took Christ by the hand 
to be your Lord and portion, that you wist what you did : and 
that notwithstanding of all the hardnesses vou have met with in 
biding by him, your heart seems to cleave the faster to him. 

At ff 78 7° U h , aVe been admi "ed into much of his company 
and fellowship. My soul blesses God on vour behalf, who hath 
so carried to you, that I think you may take these words among 
others as spoken to you, < You have continued with me in my 



LADY CALDWELL. 229 

afflictions : I appoint unto you a kingdom.' It seems suffering 
for Christ, losing anything for him is to you your glory, is to you 
your gain. More and more of this spirit may you enjoy, that 
you may be among the few (as was said of Caleb and Joshua) 
that follow him fully, among the overcomers, those noble over- 
comers mentioned Rev. ii. and iii., among those to whom only 
(as picked out and chosen for that end) he is saying, ' Ye are 
my witnesses.' Lady and my dear sister, I am of your judg- 
ment ; and I bless his name that ever he counted me worthy to 
appear in that roll." He concluded thus : " Let us mind one 
another. My love to all friends whom you know I love in the 
Lord. God's grace be with you, and his blessing upon your 
little ones, whom he hath been a father to !"* 

As has been said before, though by her marriage contract 
Lady Caldwell had secured to her, from the lands of Caldwell, an 
annual rent jointure, and had been actually infcfted in the es- 
tate, prior to its forfeiture,! she was deprived of this right. As 
might be expected, Dalziel, instead of respecting her rights, left 
no means untried to set them aside. In the beginning of the 
year 1680, as donator to the forfeited estate of Caldwell, he pur- 
sued her for mails and duties. She defended herself upon the 
ground of her lifetime infeftment. The base artifice with which 
her defence was met on the part of Dalziel, is worthy of notice. 
Among other things, it was alleged for him, first, that Lady 
Caldwell's husband was yet alive, so that her liferent existed not ; 
and, secondly, that she herself was in the late rebellion, in June, 
1679. Both allegations were equally untrue. Her husband was 
not then alive, having died in Holland, in 1670; and the slan- 
derous defamation that she was in the rebellion at Bothwell 
bridge was, doubtless, brought forward to injure her cause, by 
creating prejudices against her in the minds of her judges. On 
her bringing an action against Dalziel before the lords of session, 

* M'Crie's Memoirs of Veitch and Brysson, &c, pp. 371-373. This letter is taken 
from the Wodrow MSS. It is addressed on the back, "For the Lady Caldwell, at 
Glasgow." 

t Sir William Cunningham, of Cunninghamhead, in his account of the sufferings 
of Lady Caldwell, preserved among the Wodrow MSS. (vol. xxxiii.. folio, No. 57), 
incorrectly says that she had " neglected to take infeftment ;" and Wodrow, whose 
account of her sufferings is taken from that document, falls into a similar mistake. — 
(History, vol. iii., p. 440.) Fountainhall says, " Muir of Caldwell, being married to 
Cunningham's daughter, in 1657, he infefts her in a life-rent jointure, partly by 
way of locality, and partly an annuity." — His Decisions, &c, p. 558. But though 
she was infefted upon her contract of marriage, her right was not confirmed by the 
earl of Eglinton, of whom her husband held immediately his lands. — Morison's Dic- 
tionary of Decisions, pp. 4690-4G93. 

20 



230 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

for her jointure from the forfeited estate, the lords, in November, 
1682, found that though she had been infefted upon her contract 
of mirriage, yet, as her right was not confirmed by the earl of 
Eglinton, her husband's immediate superior,* her right fell under 
the forfeiture, and that by the forfeiture of a sub-vassal (whether 
the king's immediate or mediate vassal), not only his own right, 
but all rights flowing from him, were carried.! 

For a considerable number of years after her return from Hol- 
land, Lady Caldwell had not experienced personal annoyance on 
account of her nonconforming principles, but was allowed, with- 
out disturbance, to pursue the peaceful occupations by which she 
ind her children earned for themselves the means of subsistence. 
Indeed, considering what she had already suffered in being de- 
prived of all her worldly substance, the government might have 
been ashamed to subject her to additional hardships and more 
accumulated sorrow. But arbitrary and persecuting governments 
are as little affected by a sense of shame as by a sense of jus- 
tice. In the year 1683, about twelve years after her return from 
the continent, during which time she had lived in industrious and 
contented poverty, chiefly, it would appear, at Glasgow, the storm 
of persecution suddenly burst upon her head. Without indict- 
ment or trial she was made prisoner, and confined in one of the 
state-prisons for upward of three years. The cause of her im- 
prisonment, and the hardships she endured during its continu- 
ance, we shall briefly relate, as affording a striking instance of 
the extreme disregard of justice, and the utter heartlessness which 
characterized the men who administered the affairs of our coun- 
try in the limes of which we write.! 

The circumstance in which her imprisonment originated was 
the false information that a recusant minister had been preaching 
in her house. To make the narrative intelligible to the reader, 
it is necessary to state that the house in which she lived, which 
was in Glasgow, was near the foot, and upon the east side of the 

* Her right was not confirmed by hini previous to the forfeiture, though it was 
confirmed by him during the time of the debate. 

t Morison's Dictionary of Decisions, pp. 4690-4693. 

t Our narrative is taken chiefly from Sir William Cunningham's MS. account of 
Lady Caldwell's sufferings, already referred to. It may here be stated, that Sir 
William was not Lady Caldwell's brother, as Dr. Burns, in his edition of Wodiow'a 
History, supposes (vol iii., p 441 1, but her brother's son — her brother, as we have 
seen before, having died in 1670, when he was succeeded by his eldest son, 
the writer of that account. The son, like the father, was a sufferer in those evil 
times, even when a schoolboy, incapable of giving much offence, or cros.ting rmioh 
alarm — See Wodrow's History, vol. ii., pp. 428, 429. He married Anne, daughter 
of Sir Archibald Stuart, of Castlemilk, but had no issue, and died in 1721.— Robert- 
son's Ayrshire Families, vol. i., p. 308. 



LADY CALDWELL. 231 

street called the Saltmarket, and that the windows consisted 
mostly of timber boards, there being only a few inches of glass 
above the boards. One would suppose that it would have been 
difficult, or rather impossible, for any person, from the opposite 
side of the street, to discover, through the small pieces of glass 
at the top, what was going on in the interior of the house. But 
in those days it was no uncommon thing for base individuals,* 
either from pure malignity or in the mercenary hope of reward, 
to give false informations to the government and their underlings 
against the persecuted presbyterians ; and in the present case a 
person of this stamp, who lived on the opposite side of the street, 
affirmed that one night, on looking from his own house on the 
west side of the street, just opposite to her house, he saw a min- 
ister preaching in her chamber. He immediately repaired to the 
land-provost of Glasgow, whose name was Barns, a man of 
known hostility to the presbyterians, and informed him of what 
he pretended he had seen. The provost, incited by Mr. Arthur 
Ross, then archbishop of Glasgow, whom he had informed of the 
case, proceeded so far as to give orders for the apprehension of 
Lady Caldwell and her three daughters who lived with her, and 
they were all imprisoned in the tolbooth of Glasgow. This was 
done, be it observed, before they were convicted of any fault, and 
solely upon the information of a single person, whose information 
might justly be suspected of falsehood, it being hardly credible 
that he could discover by candle-light through two glasses — his 
own window and the few inches of glass which were at the top 
of hers — at the distance of so broad a street, a minister preach- 
ing in the house, had a minister at the time been so engaged. 
In vain was redress to be looked for from the lards of his majes- 
ty's privy council, for they were the very fountain of oppression, 
the chief instruments*of destroying the civil and religious liber- 
ties of their country. On being informed of the case, probably 
by the archbishop of Glasgow, the privy council not only ap- 
proved of the illegal proceedings of the provost of Glasgow, but 
gave orders, May 22d, 1683, that Lady Caldwell and her eldest 
daughter, Miss Jean, should be carried prisoners to the castle of 
Blackness,! by a strong guard. The orders were strictly execu- 

* These were either renegades from the presbyterian faith, or the lowest and most 
degraded of the people. 

t Blackness casile is an ancient royal fortress, in the parish of Carriden, Linlith- 
gowshire. It is situated at the eastern extremity of the parish, on the south side 
of the firth of Forth, on a rocky promontory, projecting into the firth. It is built in 
the form of a ship, and is one of the oldest fortifications of Scotland, being a reg- 
ular fort of four bastions, which, along with the fortifications on the small island of 



232 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

ted, and Lady Caldwell continued a prisoner there for a period 
of more than three years, and her daughter for nearly six months. 
Had the charge brought against Lady Caldwell been substan- 
tiated—had it been proved that, at the time specified, a noncon- 
forming minister had been preaching in her house — she and her 
daughter would no doubt have been liable to the severe penalties 
of the unrighteous and cruel laws then in force against conven- 
ticles. By an act of parliament, passed in August, 1670, outed 
ministers not licensed by the council, and any other persons not 
authorized by the bishop of the diocese, are prohibited from 
preaching, expounding scripture, or praying, in any meeting ex- 
cept in their own houses, and to those of their own family, under 
severe penalties ; and by the same act it is " statute and com- 
manded that none be present at any meeting, where any not 
licensed, authorized, nor tolerated, as said is, shall preach, ex- 
pound scripture, or pray," except the minister's own family ; and 
it is declared that " every person who shall be found to have 
been present at any such meetings shall be, toties quotics, fined 
according to their qualities, in the respective sums following, and 
imprisoned until they pay their fines, and further during the coun- 
cil's pleasure And if the master or mistress of any family, 

where any such meetings shall be kept, be present within the 

Inchsarvie, seems completely to command the passage of the Forth to Stirling. Tt is 
one of the four ancient national fortresses that, by the articles of union, are required 
to be kept in constant repair; the other three being the castles of Edinburgh, Stir- 
ling, and Dumbarton. The period of its erection is unknown. During the struggle 
between presbytery and prelacy, in the reign of James VI., it was used as a place 
of confinement for those ministers and laymen who had become obnoxious to the 
government for their assertion of the principles of religious liberty. Here Mr. John 
Welsh, minister of Ayr, and five other ministers, were, for holding a general assem- 
bly at Aberdeen, in July, 1605, in opposition to the wishes of the monarch, confined 
from August that year till toward the close of the following year, when they were 
banished the king's dominions, not to return upon the pain of death. The dungeon 
in which Welsh was immured is still pointed out. It is the lower cell on the west 
part of the building. The visiter who enters it is enabled to form some idea of what 
our forefathers suffered in the cause of civil and religious freedom. It is of small di- 
mensions. The floor is the bare unequal rock, on which one can neither stand nor 
walk with any measure of comfort ; and the only means by which light and air are 
admitted is a chink in the wall. Blackness castle was at length allowed to fall into 
disrepair, but as the persecution of Charles II. advanced, to find room for the whig 
prisoners, it was again fitted up as a place of confinement. " 24th June, 1677. The 
council wrote a letter to his majesty, desiring he would be pleased to grant warrant 
to his thresurie for lifting as much money as will repair the castle of Blackness for 
holding prisoners, the Bass being already full. His majesty sent down a warrant 
conform." — Fouutainhall's Historical Notices, p. 1G9. B I acknes6 castle was repaired 
in the year 1679, " designed," says Row, "to be a prison as formerly under the old 
bishops." — Life of Robert Blair, p. 567. And within its gloomy walls many cove- 
nanters were immured for years. In a dungeon still called " The Whigs' Vault," 
a dozen or a score of them, according to tradition, would sometimes be confined to- 
gether as so many cattle. 



LADY CALDWELL. 233 

house for the time, they are to he fined in the double of what is 
to be paid by them for being present at a house conventicle."* 
And in an act of parliament, June, 1672, in reference to the part of 
the preceding act which prohibits nonconforming ministers, not 
licensed by the council, or not having authority from the bishop 
of the diocese, " from preaching, expounding scripture, or praying 
in any meeting, except in their own houses, and to those of their 
own family," it is said : " Since there may be some questions 
and doubts concerning the meaning and extent of that word fray, 
his majesty doth, with advice aforesaid, declare that it is not to 
be understood as if thereby prayer in families were discharged 
by the persons of the family, and such as shall be present, not 
exceeding the number of four persons, besides those of the fam- 
ily ; [but] it is always declared that this act doth not give allow- 
ance to any outed minister to pray in any families except in the 
parishes where they be allowed to preach. "f Even the indulged 
ministers could not, according to the acts of the indulgence, Sep- 
tember, 1672, have preached in the private house of a friend 
without involving themselves and their hearers in the violation 
of these laws ; and they were laws still in force, in so far as 
Glasgow was concerned : for although a proclamation, suspend- 
ing the laws against house conventicles on the south side of the 
river Tay, was issued, dated June 29, 1679, "the town of Edin- 
burgh and two miles around it, with the lordships of Musselburgh 
and Dalkeith, the cities of St. Andrews, and Glasgow, and Stir- 
ling, and a mile about each of them," are excepted.^ Had Lady 
Caldwell and her daughter then been convicted of the charge 
brought against them, they would, according to the iniquitous 
laws then in force, have been liable to be fined, and, failing to 
pay their fines, to be imprisoned. || 

* Wodrow's History, vol. ii., p. 169. t Ibid, p. 200. 

% Ibid., vol. iii., p. 149. But even as to house conventicles, as Fountainhall in- 
forms us, the council afterward found that, notwithstanding this proclamation of in- 
dalgence, they might be punished and fined unless licensed by the council — that the 
king's indulgence had not permitted them but only where, upon application to the 
council, they are established. — Historical Notices of Scottish Affairs, p. 244. 

|| Sir William Cunningham, in his account of Lady Caldwell's sufferings, speak- 
ing of her daughter, Miss Jean, indeed says: "Yea, though the matter of fact as 
alleged had been true, what law even then could make the poor gentlewoman of 
twenty years of age liable to such cruel treatment, she being in her mother's house, 
where, though there had been sermon, yet by law it ought to have been proven 
that there were five more than the family present to hear it, whereas it was never 
pretended that there were any more present than the lady and her fondly." Wod- 
row makes the same statement: but both are mistaken. It would have been ille- 
gal, as is evident from the acts of parliament quoted in the text, for a nonconforming 
minister to have preached in Lady Caldwell's house, though none but the members 
of her family had been present. 

20* 



234 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

But they were not convicted of the breach of any law. Their 
imprisonment, was therefore illegal. Presbyterian ministers were 
indeed in the habit of paying visits to Lady Caldwell, and they 
frequently preached in her house — but this was never proved ; 
and in reference to the particular charge, on the ground of which 
she was imprisoned, she always denied that, at the time speci- 
fied by her accuser, any person was preaching in her house, and 
the contrary was never established against her. No attempt was 
indeed made to prove the charge ; the very forms of law were 
disregarded ; no judicial procedure was gone through ; a sum- 
mary and arbitrary course, which bore injustice on its very 
front, was adopted — a course naturally tending to destroy all se- 
curity of personal liberty, and to beget a universal distrust ; for 
any one might have been arrested upon a similar charge, and, 
however innocent, have been consigned to a dungeon. 

The treatment of Lady Caldwell and her eldest daughter was 
not only illegal and tyrannical, it was also barbarously cruel. It 
was robbing of her liberty, a lady Avho had nothing else under 
God but the fruits of her own industry, to support herself and 
her children, and against whom nothing could be found by her 
persecutors, save only that " after the way which they called her- 
esy, she worshipped the God of her fathers." 

When brought to the castle of Blackness, she and her daugh- 
ter were kept close prisoners, except that the governor, who was 
disposed to favor them, sometimes (though at his peril) allowed 
them to visit his lady, whose room Mas immediately below the 
cell in which they were confined. The society of the two cap- 
tives would serve in some degree to relieve the tedious hours of 
their imprisonment; but after the lapse of nearly six months,* 
Miss Jean, who was only about twenty years of age, began to 
suffer in her health, in consequence of her close confinement, 
which excited painful apprehensions in her mother, whose sense 
of her own sufferings was for the time absorbed in the deep and 
distressing concern which she felt for her afflicted daughter. 
Lady Caldwell having conveyed to some of her relations infor- 
mation respecting the indisposition of Miss Jean, and begged 
them to interpose their kind assistance for obtaining her r< 
for the recovery of her health, application was made to the privy 
council by several of her relations, for the liberation of the two 

* Sir William Cunningham says. " a year and some more ;" and Wodrow Bays, 
" for near a year's time." But from the date of the order of the council for her lib- 
eration, compared with the date of the act of council ordering her imprisonment, it 
is evident that the period of her imprisoment was somewhat less than six months. 



LADY CALDWELL. 235 

ladies, or at least for the liberation of the indisposed daughter. 
After much trouble and no small expense, an order was at last 
obtained for the latter being set at liberty. In answer to a peti- 
tion which she presented to the privy council to that eil'ect, 
accompanied with the testimonials of physicians as to her ill 
health, the following act of council was passed : — 

"Uth September, 1683. 

" The lords of his majesty's privy council, having heard and 
considered a petition presented by Jean Mure, prisoner in the 
castle of Blackness, for several alleged irregularities and disor- 
ders, and in regard of her present sickness and indisposition, 
testified under the hands of physicians, supplicating for liberty, 
do hereby give order and warrant to the earl of Linlithgow, gov- 
ernor of the said castle of Blackness, and his deputies there, to 
set the said Jean Mure, petitioner, at liberty, in regard of her 
present indisposition and sickness, and that she hath found suffi- 
cient caution, acted in the books of privy council, that, she shall 
re-enter her person in prison, within the said castle of Blackness, 
upon the first day of November next, under the penalty of one 
thousand merks Scots money in case of failure."* 

She was, however, afterward relieved from the necessity of 
returning to the prison of Blackness at the time specified in this 
act. Having presented another petition to the council, " desiring 
that the former liberty allowed her forth of the castle of Black- 
ness, where she was prisoner for several alleged irregularities, 
might be prorogate for some further time, to the effect she may 
go about her own and her mother's affairs, and may have access 
to her, being prisoner in the said castle, both day and night," the 
council, at their meeting on the 6th of December, 1683, " proro- 
gate and continue the petitioner's foresaid liberty forth of the said 
castle, in regard she hath found sufficient caution, acted in the 
books of privy council, that she shall compear personally before 
the council upon the first Thursday of February next, or that the 
said day she shall re-enter her person in prison, within the said 
castle of Blackness, and that under the penalty of one thousand 
merks Scots money in case of failure, in either of the premises. "f 

In February she presented a third petition to the council, 
" showing that, being incarcerated with her mother in the castle 
of Blackness, near ten months ago, for being present at a con- 
venticle, as alleged, in her said mother's house, and upon appli- 
cation being made to the council liberated, but withal ordained 
to re-enter this instant month of February, her imprisonment had 
* Decreets of Privy Council. t Register of Acts of Privy Council. 



236 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

been attended with great indisposition of health ; and therefore 
humbly craving that the council would be pleased to consider her 
circumstances, a very young gentlewoman, having no means of 
livelihood but by a dependence on her mother, and to commis- 
erate her case, and ordain her to be set at liberty, at least upon 
caution to compear when called." " The lords of his majesty's 
privy council having," at their meeting of the 14th of February, 
1684, "considered the foresaid petition, give warrant to the 
clerks of council to deliver to the supplicant's cautioner the bonds 
given for her, in regard conform thereto he has exhibited her."* 
The young lady's trouble, it would appear, on account of the 
alleged conventicle in her mother's house was now brought to a 
close. 

But her mother's sufferings on the same account were of much 
longer duration. Lady Caldwell, at the time when her daughter 
was liberated, was allowed, " as a mighty favor," " to ascend by 
some steps, to take the air upon the head of the castle-wall, but 
at that time not to go without the foot of the turnpike where she 
lodged, though indeed afterward she obtained the liberty within 
the precincts of the castle."f But after this she continued a 
prisoner there for about two years and nine months. The suffer- 
ings she endured during that period must have been great. We 
have no chronicler who has left a record of the annoyances and 
privations which the covenanting prisoners endured in the castle 
of Blackness, as James Fraser of Brea has left a record of those 
endured by the prisoners of the Bass. As in the Bass, they 
would probably suffer from the caprice, rudeness and profaneness 
of the garrison. From several of the petitions presented by the 
prisoners which we have seen, it appears that in most cases the 
health of the prisoners gave way, and that diseases of a very 
serious nature were often contracted. Hard as it was for this 
lady to be deprived of all her substance, and to be compelled 
scantily to support herself and her children by the labor of her 
own hands, her condition was now much more painful and dis- 
tressing. Now she was removed from her children, who had 
proved a blessing and a comfort to her, and shut up in a prison, 
was doomed to spend her time under harsh restraint and in soli- 
tude, her children, relatives, and friends being only occasionally 
allowed to visit her. In this desolate situation, the days and the 
months would pass heavily away, and she could not but often 
experience a sinking in her spirit. It was, however, well that 

* Decreets of Privy Council. 

t Sir William Cunninghams MS. account of the sufferings of Lady Caldwell. 



LADY CALDWELL. 237 

by the discipline of adversity the principles of her faith had been 
well established, and that she was prepared, by her Christian 
fortitude, and her holy trust in God, to suffer still greater hard- 
ships than those to which she had been even as yet inured. 

Among the hardships which she endured during this period of 
her imprisonment, the following case of heartless cruelty reflects 
the utmost disgrace upon the government of that day. Her 
cousin-german, Mr. Walter Sandilands,* of Hilderston, then living 
at the west port of Linlithgow, the heiress of which property he 
had married, having fallen sick of a violent fever, which issued 
in his death, she, on hearing of his dangerous illness, sent two 
of her daughters, probably on their paying her one of those occa- 
sional visits which for a time cheered up her heart, to give him 
her kind compliments and inquire how he was. Within a few 
hours after their arrival at his house, her second daughter, Miss 
Anne, was attacked by the fever, of which she afterward died 
at Linlithgow. Being informed of the severe and dangerous 
sickness of her daughter, Lady Caldwell naturally felt a strong 
desire to see her ; and being distant from her only two miles, 
she hoped that so small a favor would, upon application, not be 
refused. But her hopes were disappointed. Though she earn- 
estly desired to be permitted to go and see her " dearly beloved 
dying daughter," for only one hour, should no longer time be 
granted, and though she willingly offered to take a guard with 
her, yea, to take the whole garrison along with her as a guard, 
should it be required, and to maintain them at her own expense, 
while she made this visit ; yet the most earnest solicitations 
were ineffectual. These cruel men, trifling with the yearnings 
of a mother's love, refused to grant so reasonable a request, and 
thus she was deprived of the opportunity of seeing her daughter 
before her death. To such as know a mother's heart, it is need- 
less to say how pungent must have been her anguish to think, 
that her daughter should sicken, die, and be buried, while she, 
though at the distance of not more than two miles, was only per- 
mitted to hear of all this as each mournful event successively 
happened. f 

* Mr. "Walter Sandilands was the son of William Sandilands, brother to the fourth 
Lord Torphichen, by his wife, who was a sister of Lady Caldwell's father. Both 
his parents were " distinguished for their attachment to the principles of the pres- 
byterian church of Scotland, and their mansion-house at Hilderston was often the 
hospitable resort of the persecuted covenanters." Mr. Walter himself " retained the 
same attachment to protestant and presby terian principles which had characterized 
the family from the days of their illustrious ancestor, Sir James Sandilands, the friend 
and patron of John Knox." — Wodrow's History, vol. iii., p. 441. 

t Sir William Cunningham, in his MS. account of Lady Caldwell's sufferings, 



238 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

After being imprisoned for more than three years, Lady Cald- 
well was at length released, in answer to a petition which she 
presented to the privy council. From the character of the peti- 
tions presented to the privy council by the imprisoned covenant- 
ers, we can almost always learn whether a long imprisonment 
had the effect of weakening their resolution, or whether their 
steadfastness of purpose remained unshaken. If the former had 
been the effect, some concession is made, as an engagement to 
live regularly, or to obey the laws ; if the latter, an entire silence 
is preserved on that subject, so that the omission is pregnant with 
meaning — is a certain evidence that the spirit was unsubdued by 
persecution. This last was the form of Lady Caldwell's petition. 
It is simply a prayer to be released from her confinement, on the" 
ground of her ill health, and her impoverished circumstances, and 
contains not a single statement implying the least wavering or 
unsteadfastness as to her principles. This is no small commen- 
dation. Imprisonment, so far from being a light punishment, may 
be rendered the most bitter and crushing to the spirit, that can be 
inflicted, and when protracted during months aud years, it has not 
unfrequently subdued the fortitude of men, who, in the excitement 
and activity of actual conflict, have braved death, in resisting 
arbitrary and unhallowed impositions upon conscience. Acting 
like a slow and lingering torture, it has exhausted the patience 
of the spirit, and laid prostrate its moral heroism. But Lady 
Caldwell's moral firmness, after an imprisonment of more than 
three years, remained unmoved. She had no attachment to prison 
walls, to dank and confined air; for she had experienced their 
injurious effects in exhausting the strength of her frame. She 
had no satisfaction in being kept from the society of her children, 
for she had found in this her greatest earthly comfort, since their 
father's death. She had no liking for the numerous privations 
and hardships of her captivity. All these were associated in her 
mind, with painful feelings and recollection, with sighs, tears, 
and regrets — the natural companions of a prison's inmates. But 
to escape from them she would not compromise her integrity, or 

which relates chiefly to those connected with her imprisonment in Blackness castle, 
concludes thus : " As the records of the secret council will vouch a great part of this 
narration, so Glasgow affords yet many living witnesses of the truth of what is before 
advanced, and the neighborhood of Blackness, there beiue several honorable persons 
yet alive who can bear testimony to it, as well as yet living fellow-prisoners. As 
also the tsuth of what is said is referred to the declaration of the present laird of 
Bedlormie, then deputy governor of the castle of Blackness, upon his word of honor; 
yea, there is a defiance given to the challenger, to search if he can find, among any 
of the records of the jurisdictions of Scotland, if the Lady Caldwell had been im- 
peached, or convict, any other way but in the manner already said." 



LADY CALDWELL. 239 

do alight inconsistent with the principles for which she was hon- 
ored to suffer so much. The petition she presented to the privy- 
council is as follows : — 

" Unto the Right Honorable the Lords of his Majesty's Pri\y 
Council — The Petition of Barbara Cunningham, relict of Wil- 
liam Mure, sometime of Caldwell, prisoner in the Castle of 
Blackness, Humbly Sheweth, 

" That your lordships' petitioner hath been detained prisoner 
above these three years, for alleged being present at a house- 
conventicle, by reason whereof she is become very valetudinary, 
and is also reduced to great difficulties, being (in respect of her 
deceased husband's forfeiture), wholly deprived of any subsist- 
ence forth of that estate, either to her or her children, these nine- 
teen years begone. 

" May it therefore please your lordships to commiserate my 
valetudinary and destitute condition, and to ordain me to be set 
at liberty, and your petitioner shall ever pray," &c* 

As this petition, though Avorded respectfully, makes not the 
least acknowledgment of a fault, nor contains any engagement to 
live regularly in future, it was by no means calculated to concili- 
ate the favor of the lords of his majesty's privy council. But as 
James VII. was then beginning, with the view of promoting his 
scheme of introducing popery and slavery into Britain, to profess 
great zeal for the toleration of protestant dissenters, the omissions 
of the petition of the stern and inflexible covenantress were over- 
looked ; and the following order was issued for her liberation : — 

" Edinburgh, 21st June, 1686. 
" The lords of his majesty's privy council having considered 
the bills presented by Barbara Cunningham, Lady Caldwell, now 
prisoner in the castle of Blackness, desiring liberty upon the 
considerations therein mentioned, do hereby recommend to the 
earl of Linlithgow, lord-justice-general, and chief governor of the 
said castle of Blackness, to grant, order, and warrant, to set the 
said Lady Caldwell forthwith at liberty, for which this shall be 
a sufficient warrant to the said earl and all others concerned."! 

According to this order, Lady Caldwell, without coming under 
any engagement whatever, or even receiving a caution not to 

* Warrants of Privy Council. Sir William Cunningham, in his account of Lady 
Caldwell's sufferings, and Wodrow, in his History, incorrectly say that she was dis- 
missed without any petiiion having been presented to the council for her liberation. 

t Warrants of Privy Council. 



240 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

offend against the laws in future, was liberated, and, after a long 
separation, restored to the bosom of her family. During the re- 
mainder of the persecution, which was now drawing to a close, 
she was permitted to live with her children in peace ; and they 
lived together in the same humble condition as before, earning 
their subsistence by honest industry. 

It is gratifying to know that, after the revolution, justice, in so 
far as possible, was done to this worthy lady and her family. 
The forfeiture of her husband was rescinded by the Scottish par- 
liament, not only by the general act of July 4, 1G90, rescinding 
the forfeitures and fines of the covenanters, from the first of Jan- 
uary, 1665, to the 5th of November, 1688, in which his name 
occurs, among some hundreds of other names, but by another act, 
19th July, 1690, which expressly rescinded it on the ground of 
its having been pronounced by the justiciary court in his absence ; 
which, it is declared, was illegal, and therefore, from the begin- 
ning, null and void.* To illustrate further the good inclination 
of those in high places, after the revolution, to do all justice to 
those who had suffered during the persecution, it is worthy of 
remark that her then only surviving child, Barbara! (who had 
married John Fairlie of that ilk), having, as heiress and execu- 
trix to her father, and Lady Caldwell herself having for her life- 
rent, right, and interest, pursued Sir Thomas Dalziel of Binns, 
grandchild to the donator, before the lords of session, for pay- 
ment of the rents of the estate of Caldwell intromited with by the 
said donator, or his gratuitous assignees, during the forfeiture, the 
lords of session, on the 5th of December, 1705, found Sir Thomas 
liable not only for his predecessor's bygone actual intromissions, 
but for the whole rental of the estate from the time his grand- 
father entered into the possession, and even for omissions. Some 
of the judges thought the restitution of by ones very hard. But 
the answer was, Durum est, sed ita lex scripta est.\ The case 
having, however, been carried, by Sir Thomas Dalziel, to the 
Scottish parliament, the decision of the court of session was al- 
tered on the 20th of February, 1707, and Sir Thomas relieved 

* The act is entitled, " Act rescinding forfeitures in absence before the justice 
court, preceding the year 1669, and restoring Caldwell, and Kersland, and Mr. 
William Veitch." — Acts of the Parliament of Scotland. 

t Lady Caldwell's eldest daughter, Jean, who had married Colonel John Erskine 
of Carnock, died, without issue, a few years after the revolution, perhaps in 1695. 
On the Sth of January, 1696, by decreet of the commissary court of Edinburgh, Bar- 
bara Mure, her sister, was decerned nearest of kin to her. — Register of Confirmed 
Testaments, 24th July, 1696. 

% That is, " It may be hard, but 6uch is the law. - ' — Morison's Dictionary of De- 
cisions, pp. 4694, 4750. 



LADY COLVILL. 241 

from his liability for the bygone rents of the estate of Caldwell 
preceding the term of Martinmas, 1688, on account of certain 
specialities in his case, distinguishing it from other cases falling 
under the act rescissory.* 

From the references made in these proceedings to the subject 
of this notice, it is evident that she was then alive. But how 
long she survived we have not been able to ascertain. 



LADY COLVILL. 



Lady Colvill, whose maiden name was Margaret Wemyss, 
was the daughter of David Wemyss, of Fingask, and wife of 
Robert, Lord Colvill, who succeeded his uncle, of the same name, 
in 1662, as second Lord Colvill, of Ochiltree. In 1671 she be- 
came a widow, his lordship having died at Cleish, on the 12th 
of February that year. She had issue to him a son, Robert, who 
succeeded his father as third Lord Colvill of Ochiltree ; and two 
daughters, 1, the honorable Margaret Colvill, who was married 
in 1701, to Sir John Ayton, of Ayton, in Fife, being his second 

wife ; and, 2, the honorable Colvill, who was married to 

the Rev. Mr. Logan, minister of Torry.f 

The severity with which Lady Colvill was treated by the gov- 
ernment, may be regarded as an involuntary testimony to the fi- 
delity and steadfastness with which she adhered to the persecu- 
ted cause of presbytery. She was classed among that " despe- 
rate and implacable party who keep seditious and numerous field- 
conventicles, and that in open contempt of our authority, as if it 
were to brave us and those that are in places of trust under us. "I 
Other marks of the government's displeasure were fixed upon 
her, all which in fact were so many badges of honorable distinc- 
tion. 

She became early conspicuous as a frequenter of field-conven- 
ticles ; and her name appears among the ladies against whom 
the government first proceeded on that account, an honor for 
which she was no doubt indebted to Archbishop Sharp, who, as 
he resided in Fife, was particularly zealous in his endeavors to 
arrest and put down the progress of " fanaticism" within his own 
borders, and who had a great abhorrence of fanatic ladies. 

* Acts of the Parliament of Scotland, March, 20, 1707. 

t Douglas's Peerage, vol. i., p. 361. t Wodrow's History, vol. ii., p. 238. 

31 



242 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

About the close of the year 1672, and in the years 1673 and 
1674, meetings in the open fields were frequently held in Kinross- 
shire, where Lady Colvill resided ; and she was in the habit of 
attending these meetings, as well as of hospitably entertaining in 
her house the ministers who preached at them, among whom 
were Mr. John Welsh, Mr. Samuel Arnot, Mr. Gabriel Semple, 
Mr. Thomas Hog, minister at Larbert, and many others.* The 
zeal and liberality with which she countenanced the preaching 
of the gospel at field conventicles, and befriended the persecuted 
ministers, coming to the ears of the government, the storm of 
persecution began to gather around her. The more immediate 
cause of this was the following circumstance : a party of soldiers 
had been sent to disperse a field conventicle held in the Lomonds 
of Fife ; they met with no resistance from the people ; but Sharp, 
to excite the council to greater violence, falsely alleged that the 
people had made resistance. This fabricated story being com- 
municated to the court, a letter came from the king to the coun- 
cil, dated June 23d, 1674, requiring the council to bring the 
ringleaders of that disorder to punishment, and promising to send 
for their assistance some forces from England and Ireland. f 
This letter occasioned a bitter persecution against all in Fife, 
both men and women, who attended conventicles. A long cata- 
logue of names, including several ladies as well as gentlemen, 
and a number of the common people, was sent over to the asjents 
of the government in Fife, who were required to summon them 
to appear before the privy council at Edinburgh. J Lady Colvill's 
name Avas in this list ; and she, with several other ladies and 
gentlemen were summoned to appear before the lords of the privy 
council on the 9th of July. The charges for which they were 
summoned to answer, were their keeping and being present at 
house and field conventicles at Dunfermline, Cleish, Orval, and 
other places ; their inviting and countenancing outed ministers 
in their invasion and intrusion upon the kirks and pulpits of For- 
gan, Balmerinoch, Collessie, Monzie, and Auchtermuchty, and 
hearing them preach and pray therein ; and their harboring, re- 
setting, and entertaining Mr. John Welsh, a declared and pro- 
claimed traitor, in their houses and elsewhere. Lady Colvill 
and the others who were summoned, not being prepared to make 
any confessions of criminality, or to promise to abstain from at- 
tending conventicles in future, deemed it prudent to disobey the 

* Account of the Sufferings of the Covenanters in Kinross-gbire, Wodrow MSS., 
vol. xxxiii., folio, No. 143. 
t Wodrow's History, vol. ii-, p. 238. t Row's Life of Robert Blair, p. 545. 



LADY COLVILL. 243 

summons, probably dreading imprisonment had they made their 
appearance. For this contempt of authority they were, upon the 
15th and 16th of July, that same year, denounced his majesty's 
rebels, and put to the horn at the market crosses of Cupar and 
Forfar, by virtue of letters of denunciation, raised and executed 
at the instance of his majesty's advocate.* Lady Colvill was 
afterward summoned to appear before a committee of the privy 
conncil, which was to meet at Cupar on the 15th of September. 
She did not compear, but was fined, and ordained to pay her fine 
before the 1st of November. To what amount she was fined we 
are not informed.! 

Against this lady the council proceeded still further. On the 
6th of August, 1675, they issued letters of intercommuning 
against her and upward of one hundred more individuals, among 
whom were several other ladies of rank. Intercommuning was 
a very severe sentence, making, as it did, every man or woman 
who should harbor, entertain, or converse with the persons inter- 
communed, equally guilty with them. By these letters, all sher- 
iffs, stewards, bailies of regalities, and bailiaries, and their dep- 
uties, and magistrates of burghs, are required "to apprehend and 
commit to prison any of the persons above written, our rebels, 
whom you shall find within your respective jurisdictions, accord- 
ing to justice, as you shall answer to us thereupon. "J The let- 
ters were proclaimed in Cupar in the beginning of October, 
1675.|| " Perhaps," says Wodrow, " it was every way without 
a parallel, that so many ladies and gentlewomen married, should 
be put in such circumstances ; but this was to strike the greater 
terror on their husbands and other gentlewomen." 

Kirkton, in narrating this case, says : " But though the coun- 
cil sisted in their persecutions upon denunciation and intercom- 
muning, so did not our officers and soldiers, who rested not, but 
upon imprisoning, robbing, wounding, killing the poor fanatics 

* Wodrow, in his History (vol. ii., p. 242), mentions a Lady Colvill, wlio was 
summoned to appear before the privy council on the 9th of July, 1674, and who was 
acquitted, on her compearing before the council, in consequence of her bringing with 
her a testimonial in her favor from the minister of her parish, and promising not to 
go to any conventicles in future. But she was evidently a different person from the 
subject of this sketch. On consulting the Register of Acts of Privy Council, we find 
that her maiden name was " Dame Euphan Mortoun." 

t Row's Life of Robert Blair, p. 551. 

t Wodrow's History, vol. ii , pp. 286-288. Mr. John Carstairs, in a letter to Mr. 
Robert M' Ward, then in Rotterdam dated August 6, 1675, says, " This day the let- 
ters of intercommuning were passed. If we were in any tolerable frame for such a 
mercy, as, alas ! we are not, I would take this furious driving as a token for good, 
and some presage that their time would be but short." — Wodrow MSS., vol. lix., 
folio, No. 36. || Row's Life of Robert Blair, p. 562. 



244 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

and conventiclers, where they might find them ; and truly, many 
of our soldiers made persecution not so much a duty of their 
office as an employment of gain."* The concluding part of this 
extract is perfectly correct ; but Kirkton is mistaken when he 
says that the council " sisted in their persecution upon denuncia- 
tion and intercommuning." So far was this from being the case, 
that in a very severe proclamation against conventicles and other 
disorders, issued by the council on the 1st of March, 1676, the 
magistrates of the several burghs are required to seize upon any 
persons who were or should in future be intercommuned ; all 
noblemen, gentlemen, magistrates, and all other subjects, are 
forbidden to intercommune with, harbor or relieve any of the 
persons who were or should hereafter be intercommuned, under 
the pains due to intercommuners by law ; and a reward of 500 
merks is offered to such as should discover any person guilty of 
intercommuning with, harboring, or relieving any of the inter- 
communed. f On the 27lh of April, that same year, in prosecu- 
tion of the same object, the following letter, signed by the duke 
of Rothes, in name of the council, was sent to the sheriffs of the 
several shires : — 

" Right Honorable : The lords of his majesty's privy coun- 
cil, at their last meeting, did order that the enclosed letters of 
intercommuning should be transmitted to you, that you may with 
all possible diligence cause search for, apprehend and imprison, 
such of the said persons as are, or shall happen to come within 
the bounds of your shire, and have ordered that against the 22d 
day of June next, you report a particular account of your dili- 
gence to the council. This the council has appointed to be sig- 
nified to you, by your humble servant, 

"Rothes Caxcell, I. P. D."J 

Lady Colvill, like her friends against whom these letters of 
intercommuning were issued, lay under this sentence till the 
king's proclamation, dated Whitehall, June 29, 1679, by which 
all letters of intercommuning were suspended, a measure which 
" relieved multitudes who were fugitives and intercommuned, 

* Kirkton's History, p. 363, 364. t Wodrow's History, vol. ii., p. 319. 

J Register of Actsof Privy Council. It is, liowever, true, as Kirkton observes, 
that at this time " intercommnning was not so stretched and improven as after Both- 
well bridge, when converse with a few rebels made almost all Scotland as gnilty 
as if they had been in arms against the king at BothweJl Bridge." — Kirkton's His- 
tory, p. 363. 



LADY COLVILL. 245 

and upon their hiding for many years."* But while lying under 
this sentence, her zeal was in no wise abated. She still con- 
tinued to attend conventicles, and to entertain in her house the 
nonconforming ministers who came to preach in that part of the 
country where she lived. In the year 1677, when no public 
meetings were held in Kinross-shire for divine worship, except 
during the night, because of the fury of the troopers, who lay 
more than a year and a half in Kinross, meetings for sermon 
were sometimes held in her house ; and her character and prin- 
ciples being well known, she had her own share of the annoy- 
ances and severities inflicted by the troopers, who perambulated 
the country to put down house and field conventicles. From 
Captain William Carstairs,f in particular, she suffered no small 
degree of molestation and hardship. This man, who had no 
commission from the king, but who had been sent out by Arch- 
bishop Sharp, under pretence of searching for denounced and 
intercommuned persons, was at that time extremely active against 
the nonconformists in the east of Fife, on whom, with a party of 
about a dozen of soldiers, he committed many cruelties. Re- 
ceiving information of a conventicle which had been kept in 
Lady ColvilFs house, at Cleish, on a sabbath-day, in the month 
of November, at which a preacher, named Mr. Robert Anderson 
officiated, and learning that Mr. Anderson was lodged in her 
house, he came with his party to the house of Cleish early on the 
Monday morning, in order to make sure of apprehending his in- 
tended prisoners — so early, indeed, as about two or three hours 
before day — and, rapping at the gate of the house, surprised and 
alarmed all the inmates. Having made their way into the house, 
they apprehended Mr. Anderson, and William Sethrum, the 
chamberlain, and " broke Robert Steedman's head, who made his 
escape ; and when the captain missed him, he fell into a fit of 
the convulsion, and continued two or three hours in it." This 
proved a very fortunate circumstance for Lady Colvill and her son, 
Lord Colvill, who was then a child, for during the time that Car- 

* Wodrow's History, vol. iii.. pp. 149, 151. 

t Carstairs was " a wretch who earned a living in Scotland by going disguised to 
conventicles, and then informing against the preachers." — Macauley's History of 
England, vol. i., p. 237. It was believed that at the time when the supposed popish 
plot in England, in 1680, excited so great alarm, this infamous man, to get money, 
lent his aid by false testimony to the execution of several guiltless persons. " His 
end," says Macauley, quoting from Bishop Burnet, "wasall horror and despair, 
and with his last breath he had told his attendants to throw him into the ditch like 
a dog, for that he was not fit to sleep in a Christian burial-ground." — Ibid., vol. i., 
p. 482. 

21* 



246 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

stairs lay in the fit, they made their escape. On recovering, he 
carried Mr. Anderson and the chamberlain to the tolbooth of 
Falkland.* To escape the fury of this miscreant, whose sever- 
ities toward others, and whose visits to her own house gave her 
but too just ground for apprehension, Lady Colvill was obliged 
to remain for some time from her house, and, like hundreds more 
of the covenanters, who were hunted like moor-fowl or wild 
beasts, to hide herself in the mountains and fields, by which her 
health was greatly impaired. f 

As might be expected of so zealous a covenanter, Lady Colvill 
preferred having in her family servants whose sentiments in reli- 
gious matters corresponded with her own ; nor in this preference 
could she be charged with illiberality, when it is considered that, 
in such trying and dangerous times, there was no inconsiderable 
risk that servants of opposite principles might, from their hatred 
of nonconformity, or from their love of filthy lucre, have become 
spies in the family, and betrayed their mistress, or have involved 
her in trouble. So early as 1670, before the death of her hus- 
band, some of her servants were prosecuted for attending a field 
conventicle. Margaret Morton, her gentlewoman, and Elizabeth 
Young, her servant-maid, having been present at the field-meet- 
ing held upon Beath hill, in the west of Fife, on the 18th of June, 
1670, which created much noise, and greatly exasperated ihe 
government, were, along with many others in'the shire of Kin- 
ross, immediately summoned to appear before the privy council ; 
and making their appearance, they, with the rest who appeared, 
were thrown into prison, where they were kept for a long time.J 
Thirteen or fourteen years later, several of her servants (among 
whom was Margaret Morton, a highly-valued domestic, judging 
from the lengthened period during which she had served her 
ladyship) were again punished for their presbyterian principles. 
From a note of a decreet, dated December 26, 1683, and July 
15, 1684, recorded in the sheriff-court books of Fife, at the in- 
stance of Mr. John Malcolm, procurator fiscal, against several 
persons for withdrawing from the church, keeping house and 
field conventicles, &c, we learn that Margaret Morton, gentle- 
woman to Lady Colvill, William xMorton, and William Young, 
servants to the said lady, all in the parish of Cleish, were fined 

Kirkton says, " William Sethrum he laid in prison, but the doors were opened, 
and lie set free.' : — History, p. .380. 

t Account of the Sufferings of the Covenanters in Kinross-shire, Wodrow MSS., 
vol. xxxiii., folio, No. 143. 

} Ibid., vol. xxxiii., folio, No. 143. Row's Life of Robert Blair, pp. 536-538. 



LADY COLVILL. 247 

each in the sum of three hundred pounds Scots, and were re- 
ported to have fled.* 

To give her son a sound religious education, was a special 
part of Lady ColvilPs care. Besides instructing him in the com- 
mon doctrines and precepts of Christianity, it was her endeavor 
to train him up in the principles of presbytery and of the cove- 
nant, which in her judgment were founded on the word of God, 
and connected with the honor of her Lord and Savior. But the 
comfort and happiness of employing her widowhood in this lau- 
dable and delightful task, she was not permitted to enjoy. In 
violation of the laws of nature and society, as well as of the law 
of God, the privy council resolved to take her son from her, and 
place him under guardians and teachers who would instil into 
him such principles as would meet the approbation of the gov- 
ernment. From the strength of the opposition which persecu- 
tors have often encountered in prosecuting their scheme for de- 
stroying the church, it has often suggested itself to them that one 
of the most important means of gaining their object is to prevent 
the young from being instructed in the persecuted principles. 
Julian the apostate, the more effectually to suppress and destroy 
Christianity, shut up the schools and colleges of the Christians, 
authorizing only pagans as the teachers of youth, in the confi- 
dence that the tender minds of the rising generation would re- 
ceive at one and the same time the impressions of literature and 
idolatry. A similar policy was adopted by the rulers of France, 
who, on the revocation of the edict of Nantz, commanded the 
Huguenots, that those henceforward born of them should be bap- 
tized in the Roman catholic religion, and be placed under in- 
structors who were the enemies of their faith, to be educated in 
the superstition which they abhorred. The same cruel and ty- 
rannical system was adopted against the presbyterians of Scot- 
land. To poison the springs and fountains of learning, it was 
ordained by parliament, so early as 1662, that none should be 
principal, masters, regents, or other professors in universities 
or colleges, unless they owned the government of the church by 
archbishops and bishops, as then established by law, and that 
none should teach any public school, or be pedagogues to the 
children of persons of quality, without the license of the bishop 
of the diocese. f But detestable as was the tyranny of these 

* Wodrow MSS., vol. xxxiii., folio, No. 144. 

t Wodrow's History, vol. i., p. 267. Presbyterian teachers sometimes attempted 
to form schools for the education of the young, but they did so at the risk of being 
imprisoned and otherwise punished — there being always individuals who, from va- 
rious motives, were sure to inform the government against them. The following 



248 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

enactments, the government went even still further. The chil- 
dren of presbyterians of quality were taken from their parents, 
and placed in the hands of such as would educate them in prin- 
ciples which they repudiated as contrary to the word of God, 
and to the solemn obligations under which the nation had been 
brought. 

On learning the intention of the government to take her son 
from her and place him under prelatic teachers, Lady Colvill 
determined, as was natural enough, to keep her son, if possible, 
from falling into their hands, and with this view she removed 
him out of the way. By this the indignation of the government 
being excited, they immediately instituted proceedings against 
her. In the first place, they fined her in her absence in the sum 
of five thousand merks Scots ;* and failing to pay this sum, she 
was apprehended and imprisoned in the tolbooth of Edinburgh. 
Lord Fountainhall gives the following account of the cause of 
her imprisonment: " December 2, 1684. The Lady Colvill is 
imprisoned in Edinburgh tolbooth, by the privy council, for her 
irregularities, and particularly for breeding up her son, the Lord 
Colvill, in fanaticism and other disloyal principles, and abstract- 
ing and putting him out of the way, when the council was going 
to commit his education to others ; for which we have acts of 
parliament as to the children of papists, which may be extended 
a paritate to others."! The reader is to observe that this writer 
was an enemy to the presbyterians, whom, though he was more 
moderate than the most of his kind in his day, he regarded as 
fanatics ; and that his account of this lady is tinged with his 
party prejudices. His exaggerated and colored statement, when 
translated into the simple language of truth, is, that she was im- 
prisoned for withdrawing from her parish church, attending house 
and field conventicles, and particularly for training up her son, 
Lord Colvill, in the principles of presbytery and of the covenant. 

quotation from Fountamhall's Historical Notices Ip. 294) is a specimen of what fre- 
quently happened in cases of this nature : "2d June, 1681. The private school- 
master in Edinburgh being called before the privy council and complained on by 
the master of the high granimar-schoiil (one school is far from being able to serve 
Edinburgh now); there are Mr. Strang, Mr. William Greenlaw, and two or three 
others of them imprisoned, till they find caution not to teach Latin till they be licensed 
by the bishop : for several of tliem were outed ministers, and others who were sus- 
pected to poison the youn? ones with disloyal principles, so that the regents of the 
colleges defended themselves, that many of their youth were infected and leavened 
ere they came to them ; and even when they are licensed, not to teach the grammar, 
but only the rudiments and vocables j for then the children may be come to that 
strength as to go to the high school." 

* That is, 277/. 6s. 6d. sterling. 

t Fountainhall's Decisions of the Lords of Session, vol. i., p. 316. 



LADY COLVILL. 249 

The cell into which this lady was cast was one of the worst 
in the prison. It was a narrow dark room, where she required 
to burn candles during the whole day, and where she was with- 
out fire, though it was in the depth of winter. " It might be 
thought," says a MS. account of the sufferings of that period 
" that persons of quality and honor were not concerned in these 
sufferings ; but the contrary is evident, as, besides other instances, 
in the case of my Lacly Colvill, who, being fined in absence, at 
last was made prisoner in the tolbooth of Edinburgh, in a little 
room where she could not get the use of fire and the benefit of 
the light of day, and that for some months in the winter season."* 
And in another MS. of the same period, entitled " Grievances 
from Scotland, 1661-1688," the following is specified as a griev- 
ance : " My Lady Colvill was put in the tolbooth of Edinburgh, 
in a strait, dark, tireless room, where, all day long she behooved 
to keep candles burning ; and was thus kept for a long time, 
because she would not deliver up her son, my Lord Colvill. 
Their quarrel with her was her not countenancing the profane 
clergy."! 

After lying for some weeks in this narrow, cold, and gloomy 
cell, than which a worse was not appropriated to robbers and 
murderers, Lady Colvill, from the privations and hardships she 
endured, was induced to petition the privy council that she might 
be removed to a more convenient room in the prison ; and the 
council, at their meeting, on the 24th of December, 1684, "hav- 
ing considered her petition, gave order and warrant to the mag- 
istrates of Edinburgh, and keepers of the tolbooth thereof, to 
accommodate her with a more convenient room than that which 
she is now in, and to detain her prisoner therein till further order."! 

In consequence of this order she appears to have been removed 
to " a more convenient room" in the prison ; but, in those days, 
the best of the Scottish prisons were cheerless and unwholesome 
dungeons ; and her health soon began to be affected. By the 
harsh treatment to which she had formerly been subjected, in 
being driven to the mountains, to shelter herself from a ruthless 
soldiery, her constitution had been greatly shaken ; and it did 
not now possess vigor enough for the endurance of a rigorous 
and tedious imprisonment. After she had been shut up for nearly 
three months, her bodily indisposition became so great that her 
life was in danger. In these circumstances she presented a 
petition to the privy council, which was supported by the testi- 

* Wodrow MSS., vol. xl., folio, No. 6. t Ibid., vol. xl., folio, No. 3. 

% Register of Acts of Privy Council. 



250 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

monial of a physician, praying that she might enjoy a temporary- 
release for the recovery of her health, but containing no admission 
of the justice of her imprisonment, nor any engagement that, in 
matters of religion, she would in future live and act as the gov- 
ernment were pleased to dictate. In answer to this petition, the 
council, at their meeting on the 17th of March, " gave order and 
warrant to the magistrate of Edinburgh to set her at liberty, upon 
her finding sufficient caution, under the penalty of the fine for 
which she is incarcerated, and to confine herself to a chamber 
in Edinburgh, and to re-enter the said prison upon the second 
of April next."* 

At the time when Lady Colvill was apprehended and impris- 
oned in the tolbooth of Edinburgh, her son, Lord Colvill, was 
attending the college of Edinburgh. On learning what had be- 
fallen his mother, and hearing farther that orders had been given 
to apprehend and imprison him also, the youth, in great conster- 
nation, fled from the city ; nor does it appear that he returned 
again to the college that session. To his mother this was a 
source of great uneasiness ; and she was extremely anxious that 
he should be brought back to the college to prosecute his studies. 
This appears from a petition which she presented to the council, 
when the day appointed for her re-entering prison arrived, at 
which time she was still very much unwell. After stating that 
the council had been pleased to grant her temporary liberty, in 
order to use means for the recovery of her health, but that her 
physicians had declared that it was impossible for them to enter 
on a course of medicinal treatment, with a view to her recovery 
in so short a time, she goes on to say, that what troubled her 
more (though she Avas brought very low by sickness), was, that. 
by her surprising imprisonment, her son did run away, hearing 
that a party was ordered to apprehend him likewise ; and that 
now should she again enter prison, neither she herself, nor her 
friends, would be able to prevail upon him to return to the col- 
lege to his studies, because he apprehended that so long as the 
council inclined to keep her prisoner, they would likewise keep 
him a prisoner. She engages that should the council allow her 
any competent time, she would, upon the word and honor of a 
gentlewoman, take pains and concur with his friends to the ut- 
most of her ability, to bring him back to the college ; and after 
he is once settled there, she expresses her willingness to be dis- 
posed of as the council should think fit, and in the meantime 
offers to give sufficient security that she would present herself 
* Register of Acts of Privy Council. 



LADY COLVILL. 251 

before the council when called. On these grounds, she humbly 
supplicates that the council would be pleased to allow her some 
competent time for the purpose specified, the state of her health 
being such, that she would require to be carried to prison on a 
bed, and she being fully resolved to employ the time which the 
council should allow her, in bringing back and settling her son. 
Having considered this petition at their meeting on the 3d of 
April, the council " continue the petitioner's liberty forth of the 
prison until this day seven night, upon the terms and caution as 
formerly."* 

On the 14th of March, 1685, the council " gave order for set- 
ting at liberty any women prisoners for receipt or harboring of 
rebels, or on account of their wicked principles, upon their 
swearing the abjuration of the late traitorous paper,f and likewise 
giving their oaths that they shall not hereafter reset, harbor, or 
keep intelligence with rebels and fugitives."^ But this act was 
intended to apply exclusively to such imprisoned women as be- 
longed to the society people, or Cameronians ; and as Lady Col- 
vill did not belong to that party, this act brought her no relief. 
There is, however, another consideration — the cupidity of the 
government — which accounts for the greater leniency shown to- 
ward these Cameronian women, than toward this lady. Where- 
ever these rapacious rulers found wealthy presbyterians, their 
watchword, like that of one of Shakspere's characters, was 
" Down with them, fleece them," and getting them once within 
their grasp, they did not quit their hold till they had stripped 
them of all, or of much that they possessed. These Cameronian 
women being without exception poor, no money could be extract- 
ed from them ; but Lady Colvill being a richer prey, the govern- 
ment had an eye upon her fine, and to squeeze from her the 5,000 
merks, continued relentlessly to harass her. At their meeting 
on the 16th of April, the lords of his majesty's privy council 
" grant warrant to his majesty's advocate, to raise a process be- 
fore the council, against the Lord Colvill and his mother for dis- 
orders ;" and at the same meeting, they " grant warrant to the 
clerks of the council to receive caution from the Lady Colvill for 
her re-entering prison within the tolbooth of Edinburgh when 
called, under the penalty of five thousand merks. "|[ She appears 

* Register of Acts of Privy Council. t Ibid. || Ibid. 

t This was an oath abjuring a paper emitted by the society people entitled, " The 
Apologetic Declaration and Admonitory Vindication of the True Presbyterians of 
the Church of Scotland, especially anent Intelligencers and Informers." For a 
more particular account of this paper, and of the oath abjuring it, see notices of 
Margaret M'Lauchlan, and Margaret Wilson. 



252 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

to have given bond for her appearance before the council on the 
21st of April ; and the council, at their meeting on that day, con- 
tinue her liberty upon her again finding security, under the pen- 
alty contained in her former bond, to compear before his majesty's 
high commissioner, upon the last Thursday of that month. 
"Whether she appeared before the high commissioner on the day 
appointed, it is not said ; but if she did, she does not appear to 
have given him the satisfaction which he required ; for the coun- 
cil, at their meeting of the 30th of April, " gave order to Patrick 
Graham, captain of the town of Edinburgh's company, to appre- 
hend her, and to see her re-entered prisoner within the tolbooth 
of Edinburgh."* This is the last notice of Lady Colvill which 
we meet Avith in the records of the privy council. Whether the 
order was executed, or if it was, how long she continued in pris- 
on, we have not been able to ascertain. 

In reviewing these notices of Lady Colvill's history, it is 
pleasing and interesting to find that severe as was the treatment 
which she experienced, it had no effect in inducing her to make 
any unworthy compliance in order to be set at liberty, or in order 
to obtain a relaxation of the severity of her imprisonment. She 
repeatedly petitioned the privy council, on one occasion, for a 
better room ; on another for a temporary release, on account of 
her bodily indisposition ; on another for a further prorogation of 
the term of her liberty ; but these favors she never asked on dis- 
honorable terms. Rather than do this, she was prepared to suf- 
fer the slow and lingering torture of a prison — a proof how well 
established the principles of her faith were, and that she pos- 
sessed no small degree of Christian resolution. This is the more 
worthy of commendation, when the weak and sickly state of 
body to which she was reduced is considered. But whatever 
were her sufferings at the hands of men, the reflection that these 
were endured in the cause of Christ — that it was for her stead- 
fast adherence to him that she was denounced a rebel, intercom- 
muned, maligned as a fanatic, fined, and thrown into a dark and 
unwholesome prison, would yield her true satisfaction. She was 
honored to suffer for Christ, and under whatever pretexts she was 
persecuted, she was, doubtless, in the sight of Him who judgeth 
righteous judgment, found entitled to that benediction of the Sa- 
vior, " Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute 
you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely for my 
sake. Rejoice and be exceeding glad ; for great is your reward 
in heaven ; for so persecuted they the prophets which were be- 
fore you." 

* Register of Acts of Privy Council. 



LADY CAVERS. 253 



CATHERINE RIGG, 

LADY CAVERS. 



Catherine Rigg was the eldest daughter of Thomas Rigg, of 

Athernie, by his wife, Margaret Moneypenny, daughter of 

Moneypenny, of Pitmillie, Esq.* Her ancestors, on the father's 
side, were distinguished for their ardent zeal and active labors 
in promoting both the first reformation from popery, and the sec- 
ond reformation from prelacy. Her paternal great-grandmother, 
Catherine Row, who was the eldest daughter of the celebrated 
Dr. John Row, minister of Perth, and the able coadjutor of our 
illustrious reformer, John Knox, is described by Mr. William 
Row, minister of Ceres, in speaking of the year 1587, when she 
could not have been more than between twenty and thirty years 
of age, as " one of the most religious and wise matrons then in 
Edinburgh." Her paternal great-grandfather, William Rigg, the 
►husband of the lady now mentioned, was a wealthy merchant- 
burgess in Edinburgh, and a warm supporter of the Reformation, 
as well as a man of much moral and religious worth. f Her pa- 
ternal grandfather, William Rigg, the son of the preceding, and 
who, like his father, was a merchant in Edinburgh, was a man 
of eminent piety, uncommon benevolence, and great public spirit. 
He is said to have spent, yearly, not less than eight or nine 
thousand merks (about £350 sterling), for pious purposes.^ For 
his opposition to the introduction of the Perth articles by James 
VI., he was fined fifty thousand pounds Scots, and ordered to be 
imprisoned in the castle of Blackness till the fine was paid. He 
also took an active part in the proceedings of the covenanters 
against the court, in the reign of Charles I. He was, at one time, 
one of the bailies of Edinburgh, in which capacity, Mr. John Liv- 
ingstone says, " he gave great evidence that he had the spirit of 
a magistrate beyond many, being a terror to all evil doers." 
Having purchased the estate of Athernie, in Fife, he is often 
called in the annals of that period, William Rigg, of Athernie. 

* Lamont's Diary, p. 115, compared with Douglas's Baronage of Scotland, p. 223. 

t Row's History' of the Kirk of Scotland, pp. 457, 469, 472. 

t He inherited considerable property from his father, to whom he -was retoured 
heir, August 16, 1619, in various lands in Fife, Ross, and Cromarty, and in a tene- 
ment of land in the burgh of Elgin. — Inquis. Retor. Abbrev. Fife, No. 293 ; Ross 
and Cromarty, No. 52 ; Elgin and Forres, No. 34. He was also very successful in 
business. 

22 



254 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

He died on the 2d of January, 1644.* The father of the subject 
of this notice, Thomas Rigg, was the eldest son, or the eldest 
surviving son of the preceding, as appears from his having been 
served heir to him in his extensive heritable property.! Of her 
father's life we know much less than of her grandfather's ; nor 
have we discovered the exact date of his death ; but it must 
have been previous to the year 1659, as her mother appears in 
that year as the wife of the celebrated Sir John Scot, of Scots- 
tarvet, who had been twice married before, and who died in 
1670, in the 84th year of his age 4 

Of the early life of this lady no particulars have been preserv- 
ed. In March, 1659, she was married to Sir William Douglas, 

* Se * & not[cP ; ° f this excellent man prefixed to one of Rutherford's Letters to 
him ; \\ hyte and Kennedy's edition, p. 216. 

t Thomas Higg was retoured heir to his father, April 18, 1644, in various tene- 
ments in Edinburgh ; ,„ the lands of Manualrig, Bowhouses, and Cromarland or 
Manual-Fouhs. in Stirlingshire ; in lands in Ross, Cromarty, and Fife; and in a 
tenement within the burgh of Elgin.-Inquis Retor. Abbrev. Edinburgh, No. 920 • 
Staling, No. 180 ; Ross and Cromarty, No. 93. S ' 

t Lamoufs Diary, p. 115. Crawford, in his Genealogical Collections, gives the 
following particulars respecting the family of Rigg. of Athernie : '« William Rij~ 
bailie, of Atherme, a very g<>od religious man, and an excessive rich merchant pur- 
chased .he estate of Athernie, in Fife, and other lands. He had a son by his wife 
a Beatson, of the house of Balf (Herald's Office), and Janet, a daughter, who was 
married to Sir Walter Riddell, of that ilk, and had issue, Sir John, and ifelJdE 
bald ; another daughter, married to Mr. John Skene, of Halyards, had issue, &C 
Second. [Thomas] R,^ of Athernie, married [Margaret] Monevpenny, daughter 

r 7T~ Mo»evpe D n.v of Pitmillie. by Myrton, his wife, daughter of — Mvrton 

of Cambo Ibid.) had asm [William] and two dau.h ers, Dame Catherine Rig,; vho 
was man led to Sir W flliam Douglas, of Cavers ,• and [Margaret! Rigg her sis.T-r wta 
was .«^«ed to George ^Scot of Pitlocbie.son to Sir John loot, ifsSrv^bS] 
«W r , Hls ' a,i -V PltoillK's daoghter. was the third wife of Sir John Svot, , 

ttl" 1 had a S °"' ^ a " e t SC o°i: t0 Wnom be e ;ive Kdenshead, whose 
daughter and heur was married to Mr Charles Erskine, brother to the earl of 
Burhan.' -MS. Folio, in Advocates' Library. William Rigg, of Athernie the 
brother of Lady Cavers, had by his wife a son, WUIiam. and a daughter Enphan! 
who, with their mother, both died at sea. in going out to East New Jer^y I 

^nnTL 8 ' W l th , M, i ? e ° rge f- COt ' ° f Pi " OChie ' iu 1685 - In *« disastrous voyage 
about seventy died by a malignant fever which broke out in the vessel, and the 
names of Lady Athernie, her daughter Euphan, and her son William, appear on a 
lis ot those who thus perish ed.-Wodrow MSS., vol. xxxvi., 4to., Nos Go' 66 and 
vol. xxxm., foho, No. 1 17. In the commissary records of Edinburgh, 24.1, November 
1693 there is ^ered, » The testament, dative and inventar, of the debts per dn- 

1 a g m Hi U ,' UqU "I',, ,U ' am 3nd Euf,han Ri ^' lawful cllil,iren t0 *e deceased VVi- 
ham Rigg, of Atherme. sometime residenters in Edinburgh, who deceased at sea 
in a voyage to East Jersey, in the month of , 168 [5] /ears, faithful^ made and 

Rig™ at P SheT r 1,an ; & f ^ **?' l? wfal childre " t0 " tl)e ^ceased Mr Waher 
Rigg, at Athelstaneford, and Patrick Hepburn, writer in Edinburgh, husband to 

crold I T '/° r h " ,' n T ereSt ' Walter ' Alex «nder, and Catharine Higg" lawfoT 
children to the deceased James Rigg, merchant burgess of Edinburgh only exec- 
utors datives decerned as nearest of kin to the said defuncts, by decreet of the 
self aTmoVe iSf^"' V ^ T* "^ date ° f the third ^ of M^ 1 693 in i * 
fr 6 hit riffr/ Lady P avers a S,3ter ' the wife of Mr - George Scot, of Pit- 
loclne, also died by the fever on the same voyage. 



LADY CAVERS. 255 

of Cavers, younger. The circumstances in which their court- 
ship and marriage originated are thus recorded by Crawford, in 
his Genealogical Collections : " I have heard that Sir William 
Douglas of Cavers applied to Sir John Scot, of Scotstarvet, to 
have borrowed from him the sum of 50,000 merks, that he want- 
ed to pay off some of his pressing debts. Sir John told him 
that he could not do it himself at present ; but there was a young 
gentlewoman at his house who had just as much portion, in 
ready money, as he wanted to borrow, and he did not know but 
both the lady and her portion might be at his service. From 
this hint Sir William made his application and addresses to Miss 
Catherine Rigg, and obtained the lady in marriage soon after 
that."* Crawford adds, " A mighty religious, good woman she 
was as any could be in her time." 

Both Lady Cavers and Sir William, who was a man of prin- 
ciple, adhered to the cause of the ministers ejected in 1662 ;f 
by which they excited the resentment of the government. For 
refusing to take the declaration which abjured the national cove- 
nant, Sir William was removed from his office of sheriff of Te- 
viotdale, in which he stood infefted.^ He and his wife also suf- 
fered when, on their children having so far advanced in years as 
to require a tutor, they selected one from among the students or 
preachers of the nonconformists. To intrust the education of 
youth in schools, in colleges, and in families of rank exclusively 
to such as conformed to prelacy, formed from the beginning, as we 
have seen before, || a leading part of the scheme of the govern- 
ment for establishing prelacy. And to enforce the laws enacted, 
in reference to this matter, a proclamation was issued by the 
privy council, on the 1st of March, 1676, forbidding all persons 
in future to entertain any schoolmaster, pedagogue, or chaplain, 
for performance of family worship, who had not license to that 
effect under the hands of the respective bishops of their diocese, 

* MS. folio in Advocates' Library. 

t The minister of Cavers, Mr. James Gillon, was among the number of the ejected 
ministers. He died in 1668. The circumstances connected with his death are thus 
recorded by Kirkton : " Another act of cruelty they [the government] committed 
at this time [at the time when James Mitchell attempted the assassination of Arch- 
bishop Sharp], was: upon pretence of searching for the bishop's assassinat, they 
seized Mr. James Gillon, late minister at Cavers, and made him run on foot from 
Currie (whither he had retired for his health), to the -west port of Edinburgh at 
midnight, and then [he] was carried to prison : and when the council found the mis- 
take, they did indeed suffer him to go to his chamber; hut his cruel usage disor- 
dered him so that within two days he died." — History of the Church of Scotland, 
p. 284. 

t Register of Acts of Privy Council, 25th July, 1684. 

|| See Notice of Lady Colvill, pp. 247, 248. 



256 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

under the penalty of three thousand merks to be exacted for each 
nobleman, and twelve hundred merks for each gentleman and six 
hundred merks for a burgess or any other sublet, foT^ch S u h 

fa!nTof aS C •" Sl 7 M ^ f ° U , nd ^ ln the «s B 
Shi mT? nV" dlSregard of thlS Proclamation, kept 
as tutor o tnei, 7n ^T' & P resh >^™ student or preacher, 
Sir John XU? t'l 1 dren '. le,t ! rswere raised at the instance of 
w tli , i ■ 1. ' hls . ma .l est y s advocate, charging Sir William 
with having « ever since the date of the said proclamation and 
rf V° the dUty and l0 > alt >- inenmbent upon, and required of 
good subjects, entertained, reset, and countenanced Mr James 

the^for\^ l ma8ter V ; Pf^e, or as his chaplain, a 
tne least for performance of family worship, albeit he be a ner- 

*££%£?£ prized under the ha'n'd of the bishopo/the 
lasofCaveS 1 rt V ' i " ^^ ^ haid Slr Williani ' Do "£- 
of parhamem ^^"^ contr f vened the tenor of the said aft 
ot parliament, and the said proclamation, and thereby not onlv 

ex C h U ibifand e n Pai r ^ P"*?" therem C ° ntained ' ^t o^ghtt 
the sani A r P ° 'm Jf TJTS* ^' C0UDciI the P ers ™ °f 
ne said Mr. James [Osburn ." Bv these letters he was charged 
tocompear personally before the privy council on the 3d of Au 
gust, 16,6 to answer to the foresaid complaint, and to hear and 
b iZ ^c s w \ r ereanen !' aS a PP ert -ned under pain of re- 
co ncil i o, / lllla '? DOt haVln * a PP eared at the bar of the 
ters to^fdtp J" 1 ? t0 thG SUmm ° nS ' lhe Council " ordained let- 
maesnlreh 1 ! ™ essen g e [ s - a '- a ™s, to denounce him his 
majest, s reb el, and put him to the horn, and to escheat. &c ra- 

unilt^/f 1 "^ 1 l rr f > aS t0 the said S^ William bought 
until the first council day ,n September next «• B ' 

of htde^b' f ^ 1 VlUlam had n0t lon * t0 llVe - The P re ^e date 
to tt yeaf 16^0 "" "* aSCenamed ' bm * t0 ° k ^ P— 
It is in the beginning of that year, that Ladv Cavers aooears 
upon the stage, as personally obnoxious to the go ve^ mem on 
account of her nonconformity. Being now left a vvuJov with 

of U Xmn C and T'tf 6 f ^ to ,^-.e Oiem in the pmcpl t 
ol religion and of the reformed church of Scotland, was one of 

most ^ nwa^Ubl7p^sQ^ D ^d S uke*^tn g h e a S a, , n8, ^ ^^^ he had 

schoolmaster, pedaioLe or chanlain for r3 V T, Ve S , ,r , W,lllam *" a 
censed or authorized to bat effec iSw^ 11 he WaS DOt R " 
the council on the 3d of Auirastbe TJZrtJJl ' ™ d { *} ]m V? ? Ppear l '*-' fore 
said lectins ■ npnrtwT^&rt^h^ 9 *' " "^ ^ ^^ » 



LADY CAVERS. 257 

the most important duties of her life, or rather the most impor- 
tant duty which devolved upon her as a widowed mother. This 
appears from the proceedings instituted against her, which we 
are now about to narrate ; and from which it will be seen how 
anxious the government and its supporters were to prevent the 
education of children, and especially those of rank, in presbyterian 
principles. It appears that Thomas Douglas, brother to her de- 
ceased husband, Sir William Eliot of Stobes, Mr. Archibald 
Douglas, minister at " Seatoune,'' [Salton ?] and Mr. Richard 
Douglas, advocate, had been " nominated and appointed tutors'' 
to William, her eldest son, who succeeded his father, and to 
Archibald and John, his brothers, " conform to a gift of tutorie 
granted to that effect ; to which office they were preferred by his 
majesty's exchequer, upon express and full consideration that 
the complainers would be careful, not only of the said minors' 
persons as being their nearest relations, but of their education as 
peaceable, loyal, and good subjects, and which was thought to be 
of considerable consequence to his majesty's service, that family 
having a great interest in the shire of Roxburgh, where they live, 
and considering that Dame Catharine Rigg, Lady Cavers, their 
mother, would take pains to withdraw them from these good prin- 
ciples." 

Lady Cavers' eldest son, William, was accordingly taken from 
her, and educated for several years at school in Dalkeith and 
Edinburgh. But William having, for the benefit of his health, 
been permitted to stay at his own house with his mother for 
some time, she refused to allow him to return to the schools 
where he had been formerly bred. At the same time, she re- 
fused to deliver up to the tutors her other two sons, Archibald and 
John, who were still within the years of " pupilarity," not of 
course because she was hostile to their receiving a complete ed- 
ucation and every accomplishment suitable to their station, but 
because she wished their education to be conducted under her 
own eye ; and so long as they were with her, she did not fail to 
instil into their minds the principles of presbytery and of the cov- 
enant. This gave great offence to the tutors, and letters were 
raised against her at their instance, to compel her to deliver up 
to them her children. They complain that " she wilfully keeps 
them that she may give them those disloyal impressions which 
may prove very dangerous to that family, breeding them up in a 
perfect aversion to the government of church and state, and who 
are already arrived at that wildness, that they will neither fre- 
quent the public ordinances themselves, nor converse with those 
22* 



258 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

who so do : and therefore," they add, " in all equity and justice 
the said Lady Cavers should not only be decerned to deliver up 
to the complainers the persons of the said "William, Archibald, 
and John Douglas, the complainers' pupils, that they may take 
care for their education, and be discharged to withdraw or de- 
tain them from schools and their other education, but also pun- 
ished, to the terror of others to do the like in time coming." She 
was charged to compear personally before the privy council on 
the 27th of January, 1680, to answer to the premises, and to bring 
with her, exhibit, and produce the persons of her three sons 
abovenamed, and to hear and see herself decerned to deliver 
them up to their tutors, or else to show a reasonable cause to the 
contrary ; and further, to hear and see such other order taken in 
the foresaid matter, as shall appertain under the pain of rebel- 
lion. In obedience to the summons, she compeared personally 
before the council to defend herself. After having heard and 
considered the libel and the answers made thereto, the lords of 
council decerned and ordained her to deliver to the pursuers the 
persons of the said William, Archibald, and John Douglas, their 
pupils, and to do so within the course of eight days, to be edu- 
cated as they should order, and, if need be, ordained letters of 
horning, upon a charge of six days, to be directed for that effect.* 
Nearly two and a half years after this, Lady Cavers was 
brought to still greater trouble, on account of her presbyterian 
principles. From what has been already stated, it is evident 
that she had embraced the cause for which the ejected ministers 
suffered with too warm a zeal to attend the curates. But this 
was not the only thing which rendered her obnoxious to the per- 
secuting rulers of the day. She had, besides, attended conventicles 
held in the part of the country where she resided, and had even 
permitted them to be held in her own house. She was, more- 
over, in the habit of hospitably entertaining the proscribed min- 
isters who happened to be in that part of the country, and she had 
retained as her servants some whom the government had de- 
nounced rebels. The strong sympathy and support thus given, 
by one in her station, to the cause of suffering nonconformity, did 
not escape the notice of the evil instruments of the government 
in the district in which she lived. Among those who, in that 
district, signalized themselves as persecutors, was Adam Urqu- 
hart, the laird of Meldrum, who was made a justice of the peace 
in Roxburghshire, in May, 1679, to assist Henry Ker of Graden, 
sheriff-depute of that county, in repressing and punishing such 

* Decreets of Privy Council. 



LADY CAVERS. 259 

disorders as withdrawing from the parish churches and attend- 
ing conventicles ; nor did these men want spies and informers 
to assist them in this work of oppression. In the list of those 
whom they oppressed on account of religion, Lady Cavers occu- 
pies a prominent place. Her conduct they observed with eager 
scrutiny ; her recusant delinquencies they carefully noted down, 
and transmitted an exaggerated report of them to the lords of the 
privy council, who were glad to find an occasion against her, in 
the hope of being able to extort from her a heavy fine. While 
living peaceably at her own house, attending to her household 
and maternal duties, she was, in 1682, disturbed by the harsh 
intrusion of the rugged messengers of the law, with letters raised 
against her, at the instance of Sir George Mackenzie, his majes- 
ty's advocate. In these letters she is charged with " keeping 
and being present at conventicles, harboring, resetting, entertain- 
ing, intercommuning, and corresponding, with declared rebels 
and traitors, and disorderly and irregular persons." 

After stating that, by the laws and acts of parliament, of this 
realm, these were " crimes of a high nature, and severely pun- 
ishable," the letters, which contain a mixture of truth and false- 
hood, proceed as follows : " Nevertheless it is of verity that upon 
the first, second, third, and remanent days of the months of Au- 
gust, September, October, November, and December, 1679, upon 
the first, second, third, and remanent days of the months of Jan- 
uary, February, March, and remanent months of the years 1680 
and 1681, and upon the first, second, third, and remanent days 
of the months of January, February, March, April, and May last, 
or one or other of the days of the months of the said years, Dame 
Catharine Rigg, Lady Cavers, having been present at divers 
conventicles in the shires of Roxburgh and Selkirk, and several 
other places, where she hath heard Mr. Matthew Selkirk, a va- 
grant preacher, Mr. Donald Cargill, and Mr. Gabriel Semple, 
declared traitors, Mr. Thomas Douglas, Mr. Samuel Arnot, Mr. 
Archibald Riddell, and Mr. James Osburn, preach, expound scrip- 
ture, pray, and exercise the other functions of the ministry,* and, 
in the said seditious meetings, vent several malicious and wicked 
expressions against his majesty's government ; and particularly 

* Field conventicles were frequently held in those days in the parish of Cavers. 
The hollow dells and rocky recesses of the hill Rubberslaw, which is situated in 
the lower division of the parish, were the haunts of the persecuted covenanters, and 
not only the place, hut the very stone, on which the volume of God's word was 
laid when the celebrated Alexander Peden declared its truths to a large congrega- 
tion there assembled, is still pointed out. — New Statistical Account of Scotland, 
parish of Cavers. 



260 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

in the month of November, 1680, the laird of Meldrum having 
gone to the said shire, in pursuance of his majesty's commands, 
for putting the laws in execution against disorderly persons, true 
it is that the said Lady Cavers, to evidence her zeal and forward- 
ness against the putting of his majesty's laws in execution, and 
so encourage disorderly persons in their irregular practices, did, 
upon the first, second, third, or one or other of the days of the 
said month of November, 1680, cause, advertise, and convocate 
diverse numbers of people, at her house of , keeping a se- 
ditious conventicle ; and accordingly there did convene above 
the number of three hundred persons, whereof some were within 
and some were without doors (which, by the law, is declared to 
be a field conventicle), at which seditious meeting the said Mr. 
Matthew Selkirk, or one or other of the foresaid persons, traitors, 
vagrants, disorderly ministers, did intimate a fast to be kept, at the 

said house, upon the day of the said month of November, 

for Philiphaugh's good success against the laird of Meldrum ;* 
which was accordingly performed, where the said Mr. Matthew 
Selkirk preached, and at which there were present above two 
hundred persons, and many of them without doors. Likeas the 
said Lady Cavers, during the foresaid space, hath constantly enter- 
tained and harbored, reset and intercommuned with the foresaid 
traitors, rebels, and vagrant preachers, as also Thomas Turnbull 
of Stonehill, John Clunie, barber in Hawick, and divers other 
seditious and disorderly persons, and hath furnished them with 
meat, house, and harbor, by herself and tenants ; as also Robert 
Davidson, a declared rebel and fugitive, as her gardener : whereby 
the said Dame Catharine Rigg is guilty of the manifest crimes 
above written, and hath contravened the laws and acts of parlia- 
ment made thereagainst, for which she ought to be severely pun- 
ished in her person and goods, to the terror of others to commit 
and do the like in time coming. "f 

* The laird of Meldrum, one of the most active persecutors, had imposed heavy 
fines on many gentlemen and tenants in the shire of Teviotdale, and committed to 
prison such as did not pay their fines. It was calculated that he had uplifted in 
fines from that shire not less than ten thousand pounds. This, as might have been 
expected, created great dissatisfaction. James Murray of Philiphaugh, principal 
sheriff of Selkirk, William Murray, his depute, and some gentlemen and tenants, 
brought a libel against him before the privy council, in November, 1680, complain- 
ing of his many oppressions and wrongous imprisonments. "Philiphaugh," says 
Wodrov, " proved his libel against Meldrum, to the conviction of all, and answered 
what Meldrum charged him with j and when Meldrum ottered to give in some new 
queries, he was willing to admit them, providing be should be allowed to begin 
wiih new queries to him. and proposed he might be interrogate whether Meldrum 
was papist or protestant ; when he was last at mass ; who were present with him 
when he had conversed last with rebels, and what compositions he had made with 
them." — Wodrow's History, vol. iii., p. 240; Decreets of Privy Council, 21st July, 
1681. This is the case referred to in the text. t Decreets of Privy Council. 



LADY CAVERS. 261 

To answer to the foresaid complaint, and to hear and see such 
order taken thereanent as appertained, she is charged to compear 
personally before the council on the 4th of July, 1682, under the 
pain of rebellion. 

Her case came before the council, at their meeting on the 4th 
of July. But she disobeyed the summons ; and, on her being 
ofttimes called and not compearing, the council granted " certifi- 
cation against her, ordaining her to be denounced his majesty's 
rebel." Afterward, however, upon application to the council, 
she was " reponed against, the said certification, upon her finding 
caution to compear before the council on the 13th day of Novem- 
ber instant." On that day, the council having met, and her case 
being again called, she compeared, with a procurator to plead in 
her defence. Her libel was read, and answers were made to it 
by her procurator, in the presence of the council. But, not sat- 
isfied with these answers, the lords of council ordered her to be 
brought before them. On her making her appearance, his majes- 
ty's advocate " referred the truth of the libel to her oath, and de- 
clared that, conformably to his majesty's letter, and the constant 
practice of the council, he restricted those points of the libel in 
their own nature criminal, to an arbitrary punishment, and de- 
clared that any confession to be made by her should not be any 
ground of a criminal process against her." But she refused to 
give her oath. The ground upon which she was required to depone 
upon oath was the second act of the parliament of 1670;* and 
the king's letter in 1674, just now referred to, restricted the pun- 
ishment, in the case of such as confessed their nonconforming de- 
linquencies, to an arbitrary fine. It was the opinion of Sir George 
Lockhart, an eminent lawyer of that day, delivered in a case ex- 
actly similar, that the above act of parliament, though it might 
compel her to depone against others, could not compel her to 
depone against herself; and that " she behooved first to have a 
remission passed the seals, and the king's letter was not equiva- 
lent thereto."! But the privy council took a different view of the 

* See this act in Wodrow's History, vol. ii., p. 167. 

t The case in which Sir George Lockhart delivered this opinion was that of Ed- 
miston of Duntraitb, who, on tbe 30th of June, 1681, was fined in nine thousand 
nierks, and sentenced to lie in prison till it was paid, for refusing to depone with 
respect to his conversing and intercommuning -with a denounced fugitive minister, 
with respect to his having been at field conventicles, and with respect to his calling 
the proceedings of the privy council arbitrary and tyrannical ; on all which points he 
was urged to depone, both from the second act of the parliament of 1670, and from 
the king's letter in 1G74. Sir George Lockhart employed in defence of his client 
the argument stated in the text. Bat it was repelled, and Edruiston was holden 
as confessed for not deponing, and fined. — Fountainhall's Historical Notices, vol. i., 
page 301. 



262 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

matter. Upon her refusal to give her oath, " the lords of council, 
considering that the crimes libelled were of a very hi eh nature, 
and that, in construction of law. she, by reason of her refusing to 
depone, was understood to be guilt}- of the whole crimes libelled, 
did therefore fine her in the sum of nine thousand merks Scots 
money, and ordained her to be carried to prison until she should 
have made payment, or found caution to pay the same, to his 
majesty's cash-keeper, and found caution for her future good be- 
havior. But if her former cautioner obliged himself, under the 
penalty of one thousand pounds sterling, to produce her upon 
Thursday next, the 16th of November, before the council, the 
lords allowed her to stay out of prison till that day."* Having 
found this security, she was in the' meantime set at liberty. On 
the 16th of November, her surety, " conform to his bond, pro- 
duced her at the council bar ;" but she having neither " made pay- 
ment of the fine imposed upon her last council-day, nor given 
bond for her future good behavior, the lords of council ordained 
her to be committed prisoner to the tolbooth of Edinburgh until 
Monday next, and recommended to General Dalziel, the said 
day, to cause transport her from the said tolbooth of Edinburgh 
to the castle of Stirling, by a party, and appointed the governor 
of the said castle of Stirling, or his deputy, to receive, keep, and 
detain her person in sure firmance, until further order from the 
council."! 

This order was duly executed ; and she continued in prison 
till the close of the year 1684, with the exception of a few weeks' 
liberty granted her for the benefit of her health. " Her case was 
indeed very hard," says Wodrow, "to say nothing of her shining 
virtue and singular piety, and her being chargeable with nothing 
but simple nonconformity with prelacy, and no ways concerned 
in anything against the government, nor could once be supposed 
to be. ""J 

How she and her children were maintained during the period 
of her imprisonment, we are not informed. She had a jointure 
of one hundred and fifty pounds sterling, from the rental of the 
estate of her deceased husband, for the support of herself and her 
five younger children, but of this she was deprived, the rents of 
her tenants being arrested for the payment of her exorbitant fine, 
which was more than her income from her jointure amounted to 
for three years ; and her close imprisonment put it wholly out of 
her power to procure subsistence for herself and her children by 
her own exertions. The circumstances connected with the ar- 
* Decreets of Privy Council. t Ibid. t Wodrow's History, vol iv., p. 54. 



LADY CAVERS. 263 

restment of her tenants' rents are worthy of particular notice, 
affording, as they do, an example of the severe treatment which 
tenants who favored suffering heritors generally met with at the 
hands of the ordinary magistrates, and in which the magistrates 
were encouraged and supported by the government. 

The instrument of arrestment was served upon her tenants on 
the 10th of February, 1683, at the instance of Hugh Wallace, his 
majesty's cash-keeper, arresting all rents then due by them to 
her, till the payment of her fine. This was severe enough, but 
it was only a part of the hardships to which, on account of her 
fine, they were subjected. As they had no tacks, but were move- 
able tenants, taking their lands every successive year in April, 
they supposed, as was very reasonable, that that arrestment could 
only make them liable for what they owed Lady Cavers at the 
time of its being served upon them, and not for the rent of the 
new year commencing in April, 1683, when they took their lands 
anew. Accordingly, when the first term for the payment of the 
first half of that new year's rent, which was Martinmas, arrived, 
Lady Cavers having called upon the tenants for the payment, 
they paid her about eleven hundred pounds, which amounted to 
about the half of that year's rent ; and for this she granted them 
discharges. But to their surprise, they were summoned, in the 
beginning of January, 1684, to appear before the sheriff of Rox- 
burghshire, on the 8th of that month, for the payment not only of 
what was due by them at the time of the arrestment, but also for 
the whole of the rent of the year commencing in April, 1683, the 
procurator for the pursuers urging, that the arrestment served upon 
the tenants put them in mala fide to pay any rent to her till her 
fine was fully paid. The tenants pleaded in their own defence, 
that the arrestment of February 10th, according to the nature of 
all arrestments, could only secure what was then due by them to 
Lady Cavers ; that not having taken their lands till April there- 
after, they could not be supposed, at the time of the arrestment, 
to be debtors to her for the new year commencing in April ;' and 
that as no new arrestment had ever been served upon them to put 
them in condition to refuse the payment of their half-year's rent 
to her at Martinmas, they ought not to be required to pay it again. 
This was thought the only equitable view of the matter by all who 
heard of it, and the sheriff delayed to pronounce either interlo- 
cutor or decreet in the case till he had advised with his lawyers. 
But Meldrum's power with the sheriff so prevailed, that, on the 
18th of January that same year, he pronounced a decreet against 
the tenants, for the payment not only of what was due by them at 



264 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

the time of the arrestment, but also for the payment of the rent 
of the subsequent year, commencing in April, 1683 ; and this 
decreet was pronounced against them without their ever having 
been summoned to hear and see either interlocutor or decreet and 
sentence pronounced against them, which was contrary to the 
form always observed by that court when a process was taken up 
to be considered. 

In these circumstances the tenants sent a petition to the privy 
council in the beginning of April, 1684, with a paper entitled, 
" Information for Lady Cavers' Tenants," both which documents 
contain the facts now stated.* The petition concludes with these 
words : " The which sentence [the sentence of the sheriff], if 
it shall be executed against us, and we thereby distressed to make 
double payment, will not only for ever incapacitate us for paying 
any more rent, but bring us and our poor families to a starving 
condition ; for all our goods consist of a few nowtef and sheep, 
which, through this stormy winter that lay very heavy upon our 
grounds, are now reduced to a very small number ; and if they 
shall be poinded and driven from us, there will be nothing re- 
maining for us but what we can have by begging our bread in the 
country. May it therefore please your lordships to pity our sad 
and distressed condition, that we may not be altogether broken 
and ruined, and to discharge that decreet to be put in execution 
against us your humble supplicants, till your lordships examine 
the matter, and hear the business before yourselves ; and your 
poor petitioners shall ever pray for a long and happy reign to his 
majesty, and health and prosperity to your lordships." 

Reasonable as is the prayer of this petition, it was rejected.:}: 
By virtue of the sentence of the sheriff, letters of horning were 
raised against the tenants, and so severe were the proceedings 
against them, that about the middle of May, all of them were 
apprehended and carried by a party of Meldrum's troops to the 
tolbooth of Jedburgh. They were indeed soon after liberated, 
but it was only to go home for the better making up of the money 
which they were required to pay.|| " I find," says Wodrow, 
" they were so discouraged by the finings and harassings they 
were put to, that, had not the laird of Cavers returned that year, 
and got the prosecution stopped, they had all left the ground."^ 

To return to Lady Cavers : when she had been confined in 

* Wodrow MSS., vol. xxxiii., Nos. 66, 67. Wodrow's Hist., vol. iv., pp. 54, 55. 
t That is, cattle. J Wodrow's History, vol. iv., p. 55. 

|| Letter of Mr. Gladstanes to Sir William Douglas, dated 24th May, 1684. Wod- 
row MSS., vol. xxx., 4to., No. 114. 
§ Wodrow's History, vol. iv., p. 55, 



LADY CAVERS. 265 

Stirling castle about eight months, she was induced, in conse- 
quence of the declining state of her health, to present a petition 
to the privy council, supported by the testimonial of a physician, 
praying for liberty to go for some time to the wells in England. 
In answer to her petition, the council, at their meeting on the 
19th of July, 1683, "allow her from that date to the 15th of 
October, to go to the wells for her health, and give order and 
warrant to the governor or deputy-governor of the castle of Stir- 
ling, to set her at liberty, to that effect, in regard she hath found 
sufficient caution acted in the books of privy council, that at or 
betwixt the said 15th day of October, she shall re-enter her per- 
son in prison, within the said castle of Stirling, under the penalty 
of 500/. sterling, and that during the time of her being at liberty, 
and in this kingdom, she shall live orderly under the same penalty 
in case of failure."* 

At this time, Lady Cavers' eldest son, Sir William Douglas, 
was travelling on the continent, accompanied by his tutor, Mr. 
Robert Wylie, who, after the revolution, became minister of Ham- 
ilton. In her present circumstances, and especially as she was 
not without fears that though a settlement were made for her fine, 
this would not terminate her sufferings for nonconformity, she 
was naturally anxious for the return of her son, hoping that it 
might be in his power to procure her liberation from prison, and 
to protect her from future hardships. Mr. Gladstanes, his factor, 
in a letter to Sir William, dated Edinburgh, October 2, 1683, 
says : " It is thought by many, when they see how severely others 
are handled for reset and converse, that albeit there were some 
settlement made for this fine for which she [your mother] is now 
imprisoned, her trouble shall not end there, and whereof being 
now apprehensive, she is the more desirous to see you here 
before any new trial ; and if your coming home could contribute 
anything to her liberation, I do not doubt but you have already 
resolved that everything else shall give place to so natural a 
duty."f 

To have obtained her liberty through the interposition of her 
son, whom she loved so tenderly, would doubtless have been 
highly gratifying to Lady Cavers ; but the assurance that he was 
living a god-fearing and virtuous life, would have still more 
gladdened her heart, whereas her hearing of or witnessing his 
living a life of an opposite description, would have been to her 
a source of more poignant distress than all she had hitherto suf- 
fered or might yet suffer on account of her religious principles. 

* Decreets of Privy Council. t Wodrow MSB., vol. xxx., 4to., No. 113. 

23 



266 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

As an instance of this pious solicitude for the spiritual welfare of 
her children, we may quote the following passage from the same 
letter : " I doubt not," says Mr. Gladstanes, " but you have al- 
ready heard of the little liberty granted to your mother for going 
to a well for her health, and that she is to return to her prison 
before the 16th of this month. I saw her here very much afflicted 
for some expressions of a letter that you had written to your 
uncle, and which she takes more heavily than all the trouble 
which she hath met with herself, or whereof she is yet. in hazard. 
I know not how it is, but I am very sure you would not willingly 
write or do anything to the increasing of her sorrows. It is like 
she may be afraid lest French liberties should spoil a £ 00 d 
Christian education."* In the same letter he says : "Your 
uncle Letholme went south eight days ago to the drawing of 
your tithes, and we expect both him and your mother here some 
time this week." 

Before the time appointed for Lady Cavers returning to prison 
in Stirling castle arrived, a petition was presented to a committee 
of the privy council, praying for the extension of the period of 
her liberty, but the prayer was refused. She accordingly again 
became a prisoner. Being, however, permitted to take her chil- 
dren to Stirling, where they were to attend the school, and where 
she would probably have frequent opportunities of seeing them, 
this would in some degree alleviate the hardships of her confine- 
ment. Mr. Gladstanes, in a letter to Sir William, who was then 
at Paris, dated October 23, 1683, thus writes: "Your mother 
went from this on Saturday was eight days, to re-enter her prison 
in Stirling castle. There was an address made to a committee 
of the council before she went away, for continuing her liberty. 
Most of them inclined to favor her bill, but did not think their 
power full enough for granting it, till a more numerous meeting 
of the haill council, which is not to be till the 8th of November. 
Archibald and John went west with her to Stirling school ; James 
and Tom were left at Cavers till Jamie recovered of a little dis- 
temper, whereof now I hear he is grown better. Your sister 
was left here till your mother considered whether it were better 
to put her to a school here, or take her west with a woman to 
teach her there."! 

From the mitigated tone in which the committee of the privy 
council expressed themselves regarding Lady Cavers, one would 
be prepared to anticipate that at the meeting of council on the 

* Wodrow MSS., vol. xxx., 4to, No. 113. 

t Ibid. The letter is addressed on the back, " For the laird of Cavers Douglas." 



LADY CAVERS. 267 

8th of November, the period of her temporary liberty would be 
prolonged. But such was not the case. She continued lying 
in prison for more than a year longer. Depressed, though not 
subdued, by long and close confinement, by the impoverished cir- 
cumstances of herself and her children, and by the weak state 
of health to which she was reduced, she presented a petition to 
the privy council, praying them to remit her fine, or favorably to 
represent her case to his majesty, or to allow her to obtain her 
jointure for the support of herself and her children. The petition 
is as follows : — 

" Unto the Right Honorable the Lords of his Majesty's Most Hon- 
orable Privy Council — The Petition of the Lady Cavers, 
Humbly Showeth, 

" That whereas by your lordships' sentence upon the [13th] 
day of November, ] 682, she was fined in five hundred pounds 
sterling, and committed prisoner to the castle of Stirling until the 
same were paid, she does now with all humility represent to 
your lordships, that the said decreet was founded singly upon her 
declining to give her oath upon the points of the libel, which she 
did not out of any contumacy, but from a tenderness she hath 
ever naturally had of giving an oath in any case, but will not 
decline the most exact and most strict trial in the matters of which 
she was accused ; and is so conscious of her own innocence, 
that she doubts not but upon such trial it will appear that she was 
misrepresented to your lordships by misinformations, proceeding 
either of malice or mistake, to which she is the more exposed, 
being a person living abstract from all company, employing her 
time in the education of her numerous fatherless children ; and 
she further humbly represents to your lordships the meanness 
and smallness of her estate, which consists only of a jointure not 
exceeding one hundred and fifty pounds sterling a year ; that she 
is in debt, and stands bound by an old settlement with her chil- 
dren's friends, to aliment her younger children, whereof there are 
five : by which it is more than evident to your lordships, that un- 
less your lordships be favorably pleased to grant her relief from 
the said fine, she and her poor fatherless children (who are the 
issue of a family who for many ages have served their king and 
country faithfully and honorably) will be reduced, not only to 
ruin, but downright starvation. She hath also suffered a long 
and tedious imprisonment, by which both her health and estate 
are exceedingly impaired, and is firmly resolved in all time com- 
ing to live inoffensively to the whole world, educating her chil- 



268 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

dren, and enjoying herself in her recluse and desolate condition, 
without meddling with any persons or affairs in the world. 

" May it therefore please your lordships to take the premises 
into your serious consideration, and, in compassion to the widow 
and fatherless, remit her and them the said fine ; or (if your lord- 
ships think it necessary) that you will be pleased favorably to 
represent their sad and deplorable condition to his sacred majes- 
ty, from whose innate justice, and gracious goodness, and clemen- 
cy, she submissively hopes for the granting of this her humble 
desire ; and, in the meantime, that your lordships, in your great 
goodness, will be pleased to permit her to intromit with her joint- 
ure for alimenting her poor five fatherless children, which it will 
hardly suffice to do in respect of the meanness of it, and of the 
debt with which it stands already affected. And your petitioner 
shall ever pray," &c* 

Affecting as is this petition, it seems to have been disregarded 
by the lords of the privy council, who, actuated by a hard-hearted 
avarice, would neither remit nor mitigate her fine. Her son hav- 
ing, about this time, returned to London from his travels on the 
continent,! she and her friends cherished the hope that by his 
intercessions with some of the leading statesmen in London, the 
government might be prevailed upon to set her at liberty, and to 
remit her fine. Mr. Gladstanes, his factor, who appears to have 
sympathized deeply in her case, in a letter to him, dated " Cavers, 
May 24, 1684," informs him of her circumstances, and strongly 
incites him to exert himself at London, to the utmost of his pow- 
er, to obtain for his mother relief. •' I am very glad," says he, 

" to hear of your safe return to London I heard from 

your mother the last week, with some of her tenants that had 

* Wodrow MSS., vol. xxxiii., folio, No. 69. Wodrow, in the Table of Contents, 
refers the petition to the year 1684. 

t Sir William had been, some time previous to his return, married to a French 
lady, with whom lie had fallen in love in his travels. But when he intended to re- 
turn home, obstacles were interposed in the way of his wife and child returning 
with him. He was not personally restrained, bat his wife and the child, which, in 
consequence of its mother beinsr a Frenchwoman, was considered as naturalized, 
were declared to be subjects of France, and, according to the tenth article of the 
edict of Nantes (which received the royal signature on the 8th of October, 1685), 
were prohibited from departing out of the realm. Sir 'William Turnbull, the Eng- 
lish embassador in France, in a letter to Lord Sutherland, dated December 19. 1685, 
thus writes : "I acquainted him [that is, Louis XIV.] also with Sir William Doug- 
las's petition for leave for his wife and child to go into England with him. But this, 
he told me plainly, the king had refused ; for althoneh the husband, bein^ not 
naturalized, might go if he pleased, yet the wife and child were subjects of France, 
and should not have that permission.'' — Dalrymple's Memoirs, vol. i., part i., pp. 
122, 123. 



LADY CAVERS. 269 

gone west to Stirling about the taking of their land. If it were 
not that her restraint confines both her and the children to Stir- 
ling, I know the condition of their health is such as requires her 
and most of them to be at some wells this summer. I need not 
tell you with what joy she received the message which brought 
the news of your curators having resolved to bring you home this 
summer. The solicitous care and constant tenderness she hath 
ever had for you, may gain your belief that nothing is capable 
of giving such ease to her present sufferings as the hopes of see- 
ing you soon, after so long an absence. She hath endured very 
much in a long and tedious imprisonment, and the restoring her 
to liberty seems only to have been reserved for you, as the fittest 
and most proper instrument for obtaining of the same. All things 
concur with that desire I know you have to perform so just and 
necessary a duty. You are trysted to be at London in such a 
favorable juncture, when you have the opportunity of addressing 
yourself to our great officers of state. I do not know the meth- 
ods you will be advised to take, or what hopes there may be of 
success ; but, to every unconcerned person it appears very hard 
to shut up liferenters and detain them in prison till they pay a 
sum of money which exceeds three years' rent of their estate, 
without allowing them any part thereof for their maintenance." 
And after stating the proceedings against the tenants, which have 
been already detailed, he says : " We hear that before the treas- 
urer went away, Sir Adam Blair of Carberrie, and Sir William 
Lockhart of Carstairs were commissionat and empowered by the 
exchequer to uplift and intromit with your mother's fine, for pay- 
ment of an old debt due to them by the king ; but if a gift there- 
of (at least some considerable abatement) were procured at Lon- 
don, either for yourself or the rest of the children, it would make 
void that which is granted to them by the exchequer. Your 
cousin, Mr. Richard, did solicit the treasurer before he went out 
of Scotland, that he might both grant liberation, and appoint some 
aliment to your mother, out of her own jointure, but he [the treas- 
urer] then declined to meddle in the affair. It is Mr. Richard's 
opinion, if you duly attend the treasurer, while he is at London, 
as he promised to him you would do, and diligently ply the busi- 
ness, that you may both procure her liberty and a remit of the 
fine. Castlehill may also be very useful to gain the chancellor 
to favor your suit, and who, I suppose, is both well enough known 
to yourself and Mr. R. W. ;" [Robert Wylie].* 

Sir William would douhtless do what he could in his mother's 

* Wodrovv MSS., vol. xxx., 4to., No. 114. 

23* 



270 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

case ; but his success was less than had been anticipated. After 
using many means in private with influential persons, he at length, 
in the close of the year 1684, presented in her behalf the follow- 
ing petition to the privy council : — 

" To the Right Honorable the Lords of his Majesty's Most Hon- 
orable Privy Council — The humble Petition of Sir William 
Douglas of Cavers, Showeth, 

" That your petitioner's mother having been several years 
now in prison, for not going to the church, your petitioner is very 
desirous she should be reclaimed, but yet such is his respect to 
his majesty's government and laws, that he will not interpose for 
anything that may be of ill example to others, and therefore he 
humbly offers to your lordships, that because of her great indis- 
position, and that she may be dealt with by her friends who are 
now very remote from her, he may be allowed to be cautioner for 
her, that she shall either live regularly, or else that within three 
months after the date of her liberation, she shall remove forth of 
this kingdom, and not return thereto without special allowance 
from his majesty or his privy council, by which the country, if 
she comply not, will be freed from any influence she may have, 
or any prejudice she may do, and which can not be expected by 
keeping her in prison ; and as this is a safe remedy, and will be 
a sufficient terror to others in the like circumstances, there being 
nothing so terrible to a woman as to leave her native country, 
her children, her friends, and acquaintances, so the justices do 
ordinarily allow this to such as are even denounced fugitives up- 
on this occasion, and particularly this was allowed to the lady 
Longformacus,* Lady Moriston,t and others ; and your lordships 
will And it upon trial to be a far more effectual remedy than im- 
prisonment, which, being within one's native country, becomes 

* " August 2, et dieb. $eq., 1683. The lady Lonsformacus being pursued for re- 
setting of rebels ; and it being alleged for her that she lived at Berwick ; the crim- 
inal lords ordained her to find caution to live orderly when in Scotiaii'l, under the 
pain of three thousand merks, or else to remove out of Scotland, never to return 
without the king's special license. And this course they took with other women 
pursued, because they could not put them to take the test." — Fountaiuhall's Decis- 
ions, vol. i., p. 236. This lady was probably the relict of Sir Robert Sinclair, lirst 
baronet of Longformacus, who died in 1678 She was his second wife ; and was 
Margaret, second daughter of William Lord Alexander, by his wife, Lady Marga- 
ret Douglas, who was the eldest daughter of William, marquis of Douglas. — Doug- 
las's Baronage of Scotland, p. 250. 

t Lady Moriston, " a pious and sensible gentlewoman," was also sentenced, in 
August, 1683, by the justiciary court, to leave the kinsdom before the 1st of Novem- 
ber " She appears." says Wodrow, " not to have been cited, or any probation led 
against her, but summarily is banished for her respect to the gospel and sufferers." 
— Wodrow's History, vol. iii., p. 472. 



LADY CAVERS. 271 

very familiar and easy in a very short time, especially to melan- 
choly women, who use to stay much within doors ; and your 
lordships' answer," &c* 

The tutors of Sir William had succeeded, it would appear, 
in training him up, if not to a hearty approval of the persecuting 
and tyrannical measures of the government, at least to an acqui- 
escence in these measures, from considerations of worldly advan- 
tage ; although by doing so he could not fail to grieve the heart 
of his mother, whose earnest desire it was to see him following 
in the steps of his honored ancestors, who had nobly struggled 
in their day for the truths of Christ, and the liberties of the church. 
In July, 1684, he took the test (which his father would never 
have done), to qualify him for acting as sheriff of Teviotdale ;f 
and the style of the above petition breathes a temporizing spirit. 
But compromising as was Sir William in his political and reli- 
gious principles, the only ground upon which he could induce the 
council to set his mother at liberty, was his becoming surety for 
her, " that she should depart forth of this kingdom within the 
space of fourteen days inclusive, after she should be liberated, 
and should never return thereto without his majesty's or the 
council's special license ; and that, in the meantime, until the 
said fourteen days elapse, and thereafter, if she remained within 
the country, she should live regularly and orderly, and that under 
the penalty of nine thousand merks Scots money, in case of fail- 
ure ; and farther, that she should make payment to his majesty's 
cash-keeper, for his majesty's use, of the sum of five hundred 
pounds sterling, formerly imposed upon her by sentence of coun- 
cil, at least of so much thereof as is yet resting, and not discharged, 
and that betwixt and the term of . . . next." Sir William 
having given the security required, an act of council was passed, 
December 24, 1684, giving orders for his mother's liberation. J 
The money was exacted from him to the last farthing ; and his 
mother removed out of Scotland within the time specified, retir- 
ing to England. These facts we learn from a petition which 
Sir William presented to the privy council, humbly showing that 
he had fully obeyed their lordships' sentence, by paying to the 
cash-keeper, and those having power and commission from him, 
the sum of five hundred pounds sterling, being his mother's fine, 
and that she had removed, within the space of fourteen days 
after her liberation, from Scotland " into the kingdom of England, 

* Wodrow MSS. r vol. xxxiii., folio, No. 68. In the Table of Contents, Wodrow 
marks this petition as written in 1684. 
t Register of Acts of Privy Council., 25th July, 1684. . t Ibid. 



272 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

where she still remains ;" and therefore praying their " lordships 
to appoint and ordain the clerks of council to deliver up to him 
his bond, as having satisfied and performed the same in all points." 
At their meeting on the 28th of January, 1686, the lords of coun- 
cil complied with the prayer of this petition.* 

Such was the issue of the grievous outrage committed upon 
the person of Lady Cavers, who was first foully slandered, then 
punished by a heavy fine, without proof of any offence committed, 
then thrown into prison, where she was detained till security 
was given that the fine should be paid ; and who, even when that 
security had been given, and after she had for years been so 
deeply injured, was compelled to leave the kingdom. How un- 
feeling the rapacity of these unjust rulers ! How contemptible 
their unmanly treatment of a lady whose helpless situation claimed 
for her sympathy and protection ! But so hateful in their eyes 
was the taint of presbyterianism, and so lost were they to every 
honorable feeling, that the most eminent virtue and piety in ladies 
of this persuasion, afforded no security against their becoming 
the victims of the most flagrant injustice and oppression. The 
subsequent history of Lady Cavers has not been preserved ; nor 
have we been able to discover the time of her death. 



ISABEL ALISON. 



We have previously met with some of our female worthies 
who suffered great hardships, though not unto the death. We now 
come to record the history of others of them who were called to 
seal their testimony with their blood. Of this class were Isabel 
Alison, and Marion Harvey, two young women in humble life, 
but of unsullied character, and genuine piety. Their tragic and 
deeply interesting story is enough of itself to entail everlasting 
infamy on the bloody rulers who pursued them to the death, not 
for any crime, for they had committed none, but simply and solely 
for their private opinions, which the council had extorted from 
them by artful and ensnaring questions. They were tried together 
upon the same indictment, and executed on the same day at the 
Grassmarket of Edinburgh. We shall give a separate account 
of each, beginning with the eldest. 

* Warrants of Privy Council 



ISABEL ALISON. 273 

Isabel Alison was an unmarried woman who lived at Perth, 
and probably did not exceed twenty-seven years of age. Among 
her religious acquaintances she maintained a high reputation for 
sobriety of character and enlightened piety. She had sometimes 
heard Mr. Donald Cargill and some other ministers preach in 
the fields, before the battle of Bothwell bridge, but not often, field 
conventicles not having been common in the part of the country 
where she lived. The sermons she heard on these occasions 
were greatly blessed to her, and if not the means of her conver- 
sion, had confirmed her in the faith, and fortified her for suffering 
in the cause of Christ. By the ministrations of Mr. Cargill, she 
had in particular been deeply impressed, and had imbibed the 
peculiar opinions held by him and Mr. Richard Cameron. 

These two ministers, though different as to age, were one in 
spirit. Cargill had seen many years pass over him ; his head 
had become gray in the service of his Master : Cameron was in 
the prime of youth, and had but recently put on the harness. 
Yet both were actuated by the fearless intrepidity which high 
principle and deep piety, combined with constitutional fortitude, 
often impart. With the exception of Mr. John Blackadder, they 
were the only ministers who, after the battle of Bothwell bridge, 
preached in the fields till Mr. James Renwick appeared on the 
stage ; the other field preachers having desisted by reason of the 
increased danger arising from the increased exasperation of the 
government. They and their followers thus became the special 
objects of persecuting vengeance, and the consequence was, that, 
driven to extremity, they renounced Charles Stuart as their law- 
ful sovereign, and proclaimed war against him as a tyrant and 
usurper.* To this party, we have said, Isabel Alison belonged ; 
and it was for holding their principles in regard to the unlawful- 
ness of the then existing civil government that she was doomed 

* Cargill and Cameron, with their followers, separated from all the other presby- 
terian ministers and people -who could not go to the length of disowning the author- 
ity of Charles, or who had accepted the indulgence, or who, though they had not 
accepted it, continued to maintain Christian fellowship with such as had done so. 
Mr. John Blackadder, though one of the most intrepid field preachers, did not join 
with Cargill and Cameron's party, not only because he could not see it to be his 
duty to disown the then existing government, tyrannical as it was, but also because, 
though he would rather have laid his head on the block than have accepted the in- 
dulgence himself, he considered it wrong to separate, as they did, from the indulged 
ministers. Between the Cameronians and the indulged party, much bitterness and 
animosity prevailed. Blackadder, who occupied a middle position between the 
two parties, was anxious to compose their differences, and to prevent them, if he 
could not unite them, from receding further from each other — a very laudable un- 
dertaking, but very fruitless in its results, as too frequently happens in regai-d to the 
efforts of peace-makers, to allay the contentions and heal the divisions which arise 
even among good men in this world of strife. 



274 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

to undergo a traitor's death. These principles, as we learn from 
herself, she had been led to embrace from the severities exercised 
by the curates of Perth upon the presbyterians in that place, and 
from the cruelty of the government in publicly executing many 
of the presbyterians in the Grassmarkct of Edinburgh, and send- 
ing soldiers through the country to oppress and murder the poor 
inoffensive people. But while holding these sentiments, she 
held them quietly, there being no evidence that she had endeav- 
ored to propagate them in any way, either by calm representa- 
tion, or by inflammatory speeches ; nor had the government any 
ground for alarm from any influence which a female, in so humble 
a condition of life, could have in weakening or undermining their 
authority. 

She was first apprehended for the freedom of her remarks 
upon the harji treatment to which some religious nonconforming 
people in Perth were subjected ; and when brought before the 
magistrates of that town they had nothing else than this of which 
to accuse her, till, in her simplicity she voluntarily confessed that 
she had conversed with some whom the government had denounced 
rebels ; by which she had exposed herself to heavy penalties. 
Having been examined, she was dismissed by the magistrates ; 
but not long after, she was apprehended in her chamber at Perth, 
by a party of soldiers, in execution of an order from the privy 
council, and carried to Edinburgh, where she was thrown into 
prison. She was next brought before a committee of the privy 
council, Avho, having no evidence that she had violated the laws 
then in force against nonconformists, proceeded, in the true spirit 
of the inquisition, to put to her entrapping questions, with the 
view of extracting matter which might form the ground of crimi- 
nal procedure against her. Beside the injustice of this treatment 
in itself, the heartless levity with which her examination was 
conducted, and the attempts made at one time to overawe a young 
inexperienced female by threateniugs, and at another time to 
coax her by promises and commendations, was in the highest 
degree disgraceful to the privy council. But though her life was 
at stake, she was in no wise daunted by the presence of her per- 
secutors ; she retained her self-possession in the novel and em- 
barrassing circumstances in which she was placed, and the 
pointed answers she returned to the questions put to her, though 
they show that on one or two points she had adopted extreme 
opinions, are yet highly creditable not only to the integrity of her 
character, but to the soundness of her judgment ; while her whole 
demeanor was marked by a propriety and dignity above her sta- 



ISABEL ALISON. 275 

tion, and which stand favorably contrasted with the behavior of 
the lords of his majesty's privy council, who, as Wodrow observes, 
" acted the buffoon," instead of maintaining the decorum and dig- 
nity which became their high office. Indeed the wisdom and 
self-possession with which, without premeditation, she answered 
the questions put to her by the council, is so striking that we 
can not resist the impression that the promise which the Savior 
made to his disciples, when brought into such circumstances, 
was remarkably verified in her case : " And ye shall be brought 
before governors and kings for my sake, for a testimony against 
them and the Gentiles. But when they deliver you up, take no 
thought how or what ye shall speak ; for it shall be given you in 
that same hour what ye shall speak," (Matt. x. 18, 19.) 

The questions put to her by the privy council, and the answers 
she returned, which we give entire, are as follows : — 

P. C. " Where do you live, at St. Johnstoun ?"* 

I. A. "Yes." 

P. C. " What is your occupation 1" 

To this question she returned no answer. 

Bishop Patterson. " Have you conversed with Mr. Donald 
Cargill ?" 

T. A. " Sir, you seem to me a man whom I have no clearness 
to speak to." He desired another member of the council to put 
the same question, which being done, she answered, "I have 
seen him, and I wish that I had seen him oftener." 

P. C. "Do you own what he has done against the civil magis- 
trate ?" 

I. A. "I do own it." 

P. C. " Can you read the Bible ?" 

I. A. "Yes." 

P. C. "Do you know the duty we owe to the civil magis- 
trate V 

I. A. "When the magistrate carrieth the sword for God, ac- 
cording to what the Scripture calls for, we owe him all due rev- 
erence ; but when magistrates overturn the work of God and set 
themselves in opposition to him, it is the duty of his servants to 
execute his laws and ordinances on them." 

P. C. " Do you own the ' Sanquhar Declaration' ?"f 

* The old name of Perth. 

t This was a paper or manifesto drawn up in 1680 by Mr. Richard Cameron and 
some of his followers, in which they "disown Charles Stuart as having any right, 
title to, or interest in, the said crown of Scotland for government, as forfeited several 
years since by his perjury and breach of covenant to both God and his kirk, and 
usurpation of his crown and royal prerogatives therein, and many other breaches in 



276 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

I. A. " I do own it." 

P. C. "Do you own the papers taken at the Queensferry on 
Henry Hall ?"* 

LA. " You need not question that." 

P. C. " Do you know Mr. Skene ?" 

I. A. " I never saw him." 

P. C. " Have you conversed with rebels V 

I. A. " I never conversed with rebels." 

P. C. " Have you conversed with David Hackstoun?" 

LA. "I have conversed with him, and I bless the Lord that 
ever I saw him, for I never saw aught in him but a godly, pious 
youth." 

P. C. " Was the killing of the bishop of St. Andrewsf a pious 
act ?" 

matters ecclesiastic, and by his tyranny and breach of the very leges regnandi in 
matters civil ;" and in which they declare war against him as a tyrant and usurper. 
About twenty of the party came together in arms to Sanquhar upon the 22d of June, 
and after the Declaration was read at the cross, affixed a copy of it there. It is ac- 
cordingly usually called " The Sanquhar Declaration,"' from the place where it was 
published. What share Cargil] had in the compilation of this paper is not known. 
At his examination before the privy council, he denied that he was at the emitting 
of it, and declared that he did not see it till after it was published, but refused to say 
whether he had any hand in drawing it up. — ( Wodrow's Hist., vol. iii.. pp. 212, 280.) 
The Sanquhar Declaration, as might have been expected, infuriated the government 
against the Cameronians, and one of the questions which, after its proclamation, was 
usually put to the presbyterians brought before the privy council was, " Do you own 
the Sanquhar Declaration?" If they answered in the affirmative, this was consid- 
ered equivalent to a confession of high- treason, and on this confession they were 
hanged at the Grassmarket. 

* The papers here referred to were what was commonly called " The Queens- 
ferry Paper," or " Cargill's Covenant," and, by the government, " The Fanatics' 
New Covenant." This document was found on Henry Hall of Haughead, in the 
following manner : He and Mr. Cargill, when travelling in the South Queensferry 
by the castle of Blackness, about the beginning of June, 1680, were followed by the 
captain of the garrison of the castle, and taken immediately on their arrival at the 
town of Queensferry, but were soon after rescued by a company of women. Cnr- 
gill made his escape; but Hall, having in a scuffle with the soldiers been mortnlly 
■wounded, soon after fell into the hands of a party under the command of Dalziel ; 
and on his being searched, there was found upon him an unsubscribed paper in the 
form of a covenant, in which, among other things. Charles is rejected from being 
king. It was generally supposed to have been drawn up by Cargill, with the ad- 
vice and knowledge of only a very few of his party, and was merely a rude draught 
intended to be sent over to the banished and refugee presbyterians in Holland for 
their consideration, and to be laid aside, or acted upon, as they should advise. Hall 
was waiting for an opportunity of going over to Holland when he fell into the hands 
of the enemy. After this paper was discovered, a constant question put by the 
privy council to the presbyterians brought before them was, " Do you own the 
Queensferry Paper 1" — (Wodrow's History, vol. iii., pp. 206-212.) And not a few 
were hanged simply for declaring that they adhered to it. — (Fountainhall's Histori- 
cal Notices, &c, vol. i., p. 284.) The Sanquhar Declaration, mentioned in the pre- 
ceding note, was drawn up in less than three weeks after the discovery of the 
Queensferry Paper. 

t James Sharp, archbishop of St. Andrews, fell by violence on Saturday, the 3d 
of May, 1679, at midday, on Magus muir, within two miles of St. Andrews. " Sat- 



ISABEL ALISON. 277 

I. A. " I never heard him say that he killed him ; but if God 
moved any, and put it upon them to execute his righteous judg- 
ments upon him, I have nothing to say to that." 

P. C. " When saw you John Balfour, that pious youth?" 

LA. "I have seen him." 

P. C. "When?" 

LA. " These are frivolous questions ; I am not bound to an- 
swer them." 

At which they said, " You don't think that a testimony." 

P. C. " What think you of that in the ' Confession of Faith,' 
that magistrates should be owned though they were heathens ?" 

LA. " It was another matter than when those who seemed to 
own the truth have now overturned it, and made themselves 
avowed enemies to it." 

P. C. " Who should be judge of these things ?" 

I. A. " The Scriptures of truth and the Spirit of God, and not 
men that have overturned the work themselves." 

P. C. " Do you know the two Hendersons that murdered the 
Lord St. Andrews ?" 

I. A. " I never knew any Lord St. Andrews." 

P. C. " Mr. James Sharp, if you call him so ?" 

LA. "I never thought it murder; but if God moved and 
stirred them up to execute his righteous judgment upon him, I 
have nothing to say to that." 

P. C. " Whether or not will you own all that you have said, 
for you will be put to own it in the Grassmarket ?" And they 
expressed their regret that she should put her life in hazard in 
such a quarrel. 

I. A. " I think my life little enough in the quarrel of owning 
my Lord and Master's sweet truths ; for he hath freed me from 
everlasting wrath, and redeemed me : and as for my body, it is 
at his disposal." 

P.O. " You do not follow the Lord's practice in that anent 
Pilate." 

I. A. " Christ owned his kingly office when he was questioned 
on it, and he told them he was a king, and for that end was he 
born. And it is for that we are called in question this day, the 
owning of his kingly government." 

Bishop Paterson. " We own it." 

I. A. "We have found the sad consequence of the contrary." 

Bishop Paterson. " I pity you for the loss of your life." 

urday had been fatal to him," says Fountainhall ; " on it, Mitchell made his attempt." 
— Historical Notices, &c, vol. i., p. 225. 

24 



278 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

LA. You have done me much more hurt than the loss of my 
life, or all the lives you and they have taken ; for it hath much 
more affected me that many souls have been killed by your doc- 
trine." 

Bishop Paterson. " Wherein is our doctrine erroneous ?" 

I. A. " That has been better debated already than a poor lass 
can debate it." 

P. C. " Your ministers do not approve of these things ; and 
you have said more than some of your ministers ; for your min- 
isters have brought you to these opinions, and left you there." 

I. A. " You have cast in baits among the ministers, and hurled 
them aside ; and although ministers say one thing to-day, and 
another to-morrow, we are not obliged to follow them in that." 

P. C. " We pity you ; for we find reason and a quick wit in 
you ; and would have you to take the matter into consideration." 

I. A. " I have been advising on it these seven years, and I 
hope not to change now." 

P. C. " Do you lecture any ?" asked they, mockingly. 

I. A. " Quakers [quakeresses ?] used to do so." 

P. C. " Do vou own presbyterian principles V 

I. A. "I do." 

P. C. " Are you distempered ?" 

I. A. " I was always solid in the wit that God has giver? me." 

P. C. " What is your name ?" 

I. A. " Since you have staged me, you might remember my 
name, for I have told you already, and will not always be telling 
you." 

One of them said, " May you not tell us your name ?" Then 
one of themselves told it.* 

From these answers, the council had now discovered all that 
they deemed necessary for instituting criminal proceedings against 
her for high-treason. But what had they discovered ? Merely 
certain opinions which she had adopted, some of them indeed 
extreme, such as it was natural enough for a young, unlettered, 
religious female, in the circumstances of the times, to embrace, 
but which an upright and honorable government would have 
deemed it beneath its dignity to notice. " There is no treason, 
sure," says one of Sir Walter Scott's characters, " in a man en- 
joying his own thoughts under the shadow of his own bonnet;" 
and every man possessing an ordinary sense of justice will be of 
the same mind. The opinions of this female as to the unlawful- 
ness of the civil government then existing could certainly do no 
* Cloud of Witnesses, pp. 85-87. 



ISABEL ALISON. 279 

harm as long as they were confined within the recesses of her 
own mind ; and the council had no evidence that she had ever 
given utterance to them even in a single instance, except in an- 
swer to the harassing questions with which they plied her ; and 
yet, for mere opinions thus extorted, they resolved to pursue her 
to the death ! She was accordingly next brought before the 
lords of justiciary on the 6th of December, 1680, with the design 
of bringing her to own, before that court, the confession she had 
made before the privy council, that the confession, thus becom- 
ing judicial, might be made the ground of a criminal process. 
Such was the constant practice of the privy council at this time 
— the one day to bring the covenanters who fell into their hands 
before them, and there involve them by inquisitorial examinations 
into a confession of statutory crimes, sometimes threatening them 
with the thumbscrew and boot, if they were not free and ingenu- 
ous ; and the next day to bring them before the justiciary court, 
" where, if they were silent, they were asked if they would quit 
the testimony they had given yesterday."* From the confessions 
thus extorted, an indictment was framed, and a packed juay hav- 
ing brought them in guilty, they were hanged at the Grassmarket 
or the Gallowlee. Such was the mode of procedure which the 
government thought proper to adopt against this excellent woman. 
The questions put to her when brought before the lords of jus- 
ticiary, and the answers she returned, are as follows : — 
L. J. " Will you abide by what you said last day?" 
I. A. " I am not about to deny anything of it." 
L. J. " You confessed that you harbored the killers of the 
bishop, though you would not call it murder ?" 
I. A. " I confessed no such thing." 
Lord Advocate. " You did !" 

I. A. " I did not ; and I will take with no untruths !" 
Lord Advocate. " Did you not converse with them ?" 
I. A. " I said I did converse with David Hackstoun, and I 
bless the Lord for it." 

L. J. " When saw you him last ?" 
I. A. " Never since you murdered him." 

Then they desired her to say over what she said the last day ; 
to which she replied, " Would you have me to be my own ac- 
cuser ?" They said to her that the advocate was her accuser. 
" Let him say on, then !" rejoined she, with spirit. Then they 
repeated what had passed between the council and her the other 
day, and required her to say whether or not that was true — yes 
* Wodrow's History, vol. iii., p. 276. 



280 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

or no. She answered, " Ye have troubled me too much with 
answering questions, seeing ye are a judicature which I have no 
clearness to answer." 

L. J. " Do you disown us, and the king's authority in us ?" 

I. A. "I disown you all, because you carry the sword against 
God, and not for him ; and have, these nineteen or twenty years, 
made it your work to dethrone him, by swearing, year after year, 
against him and his work, and assuming that power to a human 
creature which is due to Him alone, and have rent the ministers 
from their Head (Christ) and one another." 

L. J. " Who taught you these principles ?" 

I. A. " I am beholden to God that taught me these principles." 

L.J. " Are you a quaker ?" 

I. A. " Did you hear me say I was led by a spirit within me ? 
I bless the Lord I profited much by the persecuted gospel ; and 
your acts of indemnity, after Bothwell, cleared me more than 
anything I met with since." 

L. J. " How could that be?" 

I. A. " By your meddling with Christ's interests, and parting 
them as you pleased." 

L. J. " We do not usurp Christ's prerogatives." 

I. A. " What, then, mean your indulgences, and your setting 
up of prelacy ? for there has none preached publicly these twenty 
years without persecution, but those that have had their orders 
from you." 

Then they caused bring the Sanquhar Declaration, and the pa- 
per found on Mr. Richard Cameron, and the papers taken at 
Queensferry, and asked, " Will you adhere to them ?" 

I. A. " I will, as they are according to the Scriptures, and I 
see not wherein they contradict them." 

L. J. " Did ever Mr. Welsh or Mr. Riddell teach you these 
principles V 

LA. "I would be far in the wrong to speak anything that 
might wrong them." 

L. J. " Take heed what you are saying, for it is upon life and 
death that you are questioned." 

LA. " Would you have me to lie ? I would not quit one truth 
though it would purchase my life a thousand years, which you 
can not purchase nor promise me an hour." 

L. J. " When saw you the two Hendersons and John Balfour 1 
Seeing you love ingenuity [ingenuousness], will you be ingenu- 
ous, and tell us if you saw them since the death of the bishop V 
I. A. " They appeared publicly within the land since." 



ISABEL ALISON. 281 

L. J. " Have you conversed Avith them within these twelve 
months ?" 

At this question she remained silent. 

L. J. " Say either yea or nav." 

I. A. " Yes." 

L. J. " Your blood be upon your own head ! we shall be free 
of it." 

I. A. " So said Pilate ; but it was a question if it was so : and 
you have nothing to say against me but for owning of Christ's 
truths, and his persecuted members." 

To this they made no answer. Then they desired her to sub- 
scribe what she had owned, but she refused ; upon which they 
subscribed it for her.* 

The substance of the answers she had given, in so far as the 
court judged them criminating, was drawn up by the clerk into 
the following document, which they called her confession, and 
which was subscribed by the lords justiciary : — 

" Edinburgh, December 6, 1680. 
" The said day, in presence of the lords, justice-clerk, and com- 
missioners of justiciary, sitting in judgment, compeared Isabel 
Alison, prisoner ; and being interrogate concerning several mat- 
ters,, answered, that she was not obliged to answer to the lords 
of justiciary, for she did not look upon them as judges, and de- 
clined their authority, and the king's authority by which they sit, 
because they carry the sword against the Lord ; and owns the 
' Bond of Combination,'! subscribed by Mr. Richard Cameron, 
Mr. Thomas Douglas, and others, and adheres thereto, the same 
being publicly read to her ; and the fourth article of the ' Fanatics' 
New Covenant' | being read to her, as also the ' Declaration at 

* Cloud of Witnesses. 

t This was a bond or covenant for mutual defence, which Richard Cameron, and 
about thirty more, entered into and subscribed shortly after the publication of the 
Sanquhar Declaration. Among other tilings, it disowned the civil government then 
existing. It was found on Richard Cameron at Airsmoss, where he fell lighting 
bravely in self-defence. — See Wodrow's History, vol. iii., p. 218. 

t That is, the dueensferry Paper or Covenant. The fourth article of this Cove- 
nant runs as follows : " That we shall endeavor, to our utmost, the overthrow of 
the kingdom of darkness, and whatever is contrary to the kingdom of Christ, espe- 
cially idolatry and popery, in all the articles of it, as we are bound in our national 
Covenants; superstition, will-worship, and prelacy, with its hierarchy, as we are 
bound in our Solemn League and Covenant ; and that we shall, with the same sin- 
cerity, endeavor the overthrow of that power (it being no more authority) that hath 
established and upholds that kingdom of darkness, that prelacy, to wit, and Eras- 
tianism over the church, and hath exercised such a lustful and arbitrary tyranny 
over the subjects, taken all power in their hand, that they may at their pleasure 
introduce popery in the church, as they have done arbitrary government in the 
state." — Wodrow's History, vol. iii., p. 208. 

24* 



282 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

Sanquhar,' she adhered thereto ; and said she saw nothing in 
them against the Scriptures, and therefore she owned them, but 
refused to sign this her declaration, though she can write. 
(Sic subscribitur J — 

" Maitland, 
" Daxiel Balfour, 
"Ja. Falconer, 
" Roger Hog."* 

It was now resolved to proceed against her before the justicia- 
ry court, and a libel was drawn up, founded solely upon her own 
confession. Her trial took place on the 17th of January, 1681. 
In the indictment! she is charged with receiving, maintaining, 
supplying, intercommuning, and keeping correspondence with 
Mr. Donald Cargill, Mr. Thomas Douglas, Mr. John Welsh, the 
deceased Mr. Richard Cameron, the bloody and sacrilegious mur- 
derers of Archbishop Sharp, and with having heard the said minis- 
ters preach up treason and rebellion. In it she is further charged 
with owning and adhering to the " horrid and treasonable papers'' 
called " The Fanatics' New Covenant," and the Sanquhar Decla- 
ration, which the above ministers and their associates, it is as- 
serted, formed and devised, and with owning and adhering to the 
" unchristian expressions, principles, and opinions therein con- 
tained." And it concluded with declaring that of the above trea- 
sonable crimes she was actor, art and part, which being found 
proven by a jury, she ought to be punished with forfeiture of life, 
land, and goods, to be a terror of others to commit the like here- 
after. 

The indictment having been read, she was asked by the court 
if she had any objections against it, to which she answered that 
she had none. They next successively read the Sanquhar Dec- 
laration, and the document called the New Covenant, asking at 
the close of the reading of each paper, if she owned it, to which 
she answered in the affirmative. The indictment having been 
found relevant by the court, and remitted to the knowledge of a 
jury, the jury were next called, who showed considerable reluc- 
tance to appear, and only came forward on being threatened with 
fines. Two of them absented themselves altogether, for which 
they were fined by the court \\ and one of them had so strong a 

* Records of the Justiciary Court. 

t See her indictment, and that of Marion Harvey, in Appendix, No. VI. 

+ " December 22, 1680. The said day, Robert Campbell, merchant, and Alexan- 
der Hume, his majesty's taylor, being oi'ttimes called to have compeared before the 
said lords this day and place, in the hour of cause to have passed upon the as-ize < f 
Isabel Alison and Marion Harvey, prisoners, as tbey were lawfully cited for that 



ISABEL ALISON. 283 

conviction of the iniquity of the whole proceedings, that when, 
after the court refused, at his desire, to exempt him from being a 
juryman, he was required to swear the usual oath, he trembled 
so much that he could not hold up his hand. Before the jury 
was sworn, on being asked by the court if she had any objections 
to offer against any of them, she answered that they were all alike, 
for no honest man would take the trade in hand. The jury being 
sworn, she told them that all authority is of God (Rom. xiii. 1) ; 
that when they appeared against him she was clear to disown 
them ; tbat had they not been against them she would not have 
been there, and added, " I take every one of you witness against 
another at your appearance before God, that your proceeding 
against me is only for owning of Christ, his gospel and .mem- 
bers ; which I could not disown, lest I should come under the 
hazard of denying Christ, and so be denied of him."* 

The probation then proceeded. But the only proof which the 
prosecutor, Sir George M'Kenzie, his majesty's advocate, could 
adduce, was her own confession, which she had made before 
the lords of justiciary. This document (see p. 281) was now 
read in court ; and in answer to a question put to her, she owned 
and adhered to it in presence of the jury. The king's advocate 
then addressed the jury. " You know," said he, " that these 
womenf are guilty of treason." " They are not guilty of matter 
of fact," said the jury. " Treason is fact," said he ; but correct- 
ing himself, he added, " it is true, it is but treason in their judg- 
ment ; but go on according to our law, and if you will not do it, 
I will proceed. "£ He further said, making a feeble attempt to 
ward off from the government the odium of taking the lives of 
these two confessors, " We do not desire to take their lives ; for 
we have dealt with them many ways, and sent ministers to deal 
with them, and we can not prevail with them." 

effect, lawful time of day bidden, and they not compeared ; the lords justice-clerk 
and commissioners of justiciary, therefore, by the mouth of John Bauzie, macer of 
court, decerned and adjudged them, and each of them, to be an unlawe, and amerciat 
of one hundred merks Scots, which was pronounced for doom." — Records of the 
Justiciary Court. * Cloud of Witnesses, p. 89. 

t Marion Harvey, as has been said before, was tried at the same time, and on 
the same indictment with Isabel Alison. 

X This seems like threatening them with an assize of error. " This relict of bar- 
barous times was a power intrusted to the public prosecutor to bring any of the 
jurymen, or a majority of them, to trial, for not having decided according to the law 
as laid down to them. Of this absurd and tyrannical engine to intimidate the jury 
from deciding according to their convictions, M'Kenzie made ample use ; he no 
sooner observed any symptoms of hesitation, or of a desire to befriend the prisoners 
at the bar, than, with a terrific frown, he would swear that if they did not give 
their verdict according to law, he knew what to do with them !" — M'Crie's Sketch- 
es of Scottish Church History, 2d Edition, p. 483. 



284 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

The speech of the lord advocate being concluded, the jury re- 
moved from the court to the jury -house, to reason and vote upon 
the articles of the indictment and the proof, but soon returned to 
the court, and by their chancellor delivered their verdict in pres- 
ence of the lords of justiciary, unanimously finding Isabel Ali- 
son " guilty, conform to her confession of adherence to the fourth 
article of The Fanatics' New Covenant, and to the Declaration 
at Sanquhar, and to the Bond of Combination ; but as actor or 
receipter of rebels, they find it not proven." 

The lords delayed the pronouncing of doom and sentence 
against her till Friday at twelve o'clock, being the 21st of the 
current month. On the 21st, she was again brought before the 
court to receive her " doom and sentence for the treasonable 
crimes mentioned in her dittay" (indictment), which was, that 
she " be taken to the Grassmarket of Edinburgh, upon Wednes- 
day next, the 26th instant, betwixt two and four o'clock in the 
afternoon, and there to be hanged on a gibbet till she be dead, 
and all her lands, heritages, goods, and gear whatsomever, to be 
escheat, and inbrought to our sovereign lord's use, which was 
pronounced for doom."* 

Such was the bloody sentence pronounced upon this female, 
not for any act of resistance to the laws, but solely fur the opin- 
ions she held, and which had been discovered only by the artful 
and captious questions with which she had been teased. But 
though condemned to die ostensibly for treason, she felt perfectly 
persuaded in her own mind that the real ground upon which her 
condemnation proceeded, was her adherence to the persecuted 
cause of Christ. In her dying testimony, which she subscribed 
and left behind her, dated Edinburgh tolbooth, January 26, 1681, 
speaking on this subject, she says : " The manner of my exami- 
nation [before the committee of the privy council, and before the 
justiciary court], was, 1st, If I conversed with David Hackstoun, 
and others of our friends 1 Which I owned upon good grounds. 
2dly, If I owned the excommunication at the Torwood, and the 
papers found at the Queensferry, and the Sanquhar Declaration, 
and a paper found on Mr. Cameron, at Airsmoss ? All which I 
owned. Likewise I declined their authority, and told them that 
they had declared war against Christ, and had usurped and taken 
his prerogatives, and so carried the sword against him, and not 
for him : so I think none can own them unless they disown 
Christ Jesus. Therefore, let enemies and pretended friends say 
what they will, I could have my life on no easier terms than 
* Records of the Justiciary Court. 



ISABEL ALISON. o 8 5 

the denying of Christ's kingly office. So I lay down my life for 
owning and adhering to Jesus Christ, his being a free king in his 
own house, and I bless the Lord that ever he called me to that." 

Among other things, she expresses her adherence to the Na- 
tional Covenant, and Solemn League and Covenant,* and enters 
her protestation against all the violence done to the work of God 
for twenty years bygone. 

During the time which elapsed from her condemnation to her 
execution, the grace of God, by which she had been hitherto 
sustained, did not forsake her. She not only retained her com- 
posure and fortitude, but was full of hope and joy, accounting it 
her honor that she had been called to surrender her life in the 
cause of Christ. " Oh, the everlasting covenant," she says, " it is 
sweet to me now ! And I would also say, they that would follow 
Christ need not scare at the cross, for I can set my seal to it, 
' His yoke is easy and his burden is light.' Yea, many times he 
hath made me go very easy through things that I have thought I 
would never have win through. He is the only desirable mas- 
ter, but he must be followed fully. Rejoice in him all ye that 
love him, ' wherefore lift up your heads and be exceeding glad, 
for the day of your redemption draweth nigh.' Let not your 
hearts faint, nor your hands grow feeble ; go on in the strength 
of the Lord, my dear friends, for I hope he will yet have a rem- 
nant of both sons and daughters, that will cleave to him, though 
they will be very few, ' even as the berries on the top of the out- 
most branches.' As for such as are grown weary of the cross 
of Christ, and have drawn to a lee-shore that God never allowed, 
it may be, ere all be done, it will turn like a tottering fence, and 
a bowing wall to them, and they shall have little profit of it, and 
as little credit. But what shall I say to the commendation of 
Christ and his cross 1 I bless the Lord, praise to his holy 
name, that hath made my prison a palace to me ; and what am 
I that he should have dealt thus with me ? I have looked 

* Like "the testimony" of the two Apocalyptic witnesses, which "tormented 
them that dwelt on the earth," the Solemn League and Covenant was gall and 
wormwood to the government. So deeply did they hate it, that on the 18th of Jan- 
uary, 1682, by act of the privy council, it, along with Cargill's Covenant, and some 
other papers, were solemnly burnt at the market cross of Edinburgh, the magis- 
trates being present in their robes. This stupid malignity is justly censured by 
Fountainhall, one of their own party, while, at the same time, he betrays his hatred 
of the Solemn League. " Some wondered," says he, " to see their policy in reviving 
the memory of so old and buried a legend as the Solemn League was (which was 
burnt in 1661, before) ; and set people now a-work to buy it, and read it. And for 
Cargill's ridiculous Covenant, they had, about a twelve-month before this, caused 
print it, though that was only in contempt of it." — FountainhaH's Historical Notices 
of Scottish Affairs, vol. i., p. 346. 



286 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

greedy-like to such a lot as this, but still thought it was too high 
for me, when I saw how vile I was ; but now the Lord hath 
made that Scripture sweet to me, Isaiah vi., 6, 7, ' Then ilew 
one of the seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his hand — 
and he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo ! this hath touched thy 
lips ; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged.' Oh, 
how great is his love to me, that hath brought me forth to testify 
against the abominations of the times, and kept me from fainting 
hitherto, and hath made me to rejoice in him. Now I bless the 
Lord that ever he gave me a life to lay down for him. Now 
farewell all creature comforts ; farewell, sweet Bible ; farewell 
ye real friends in Christ; farewell faith and hope; farewell 
prayers, and all duties ; farewell, sun and moon. Within a little 
I shall be free from sin, and all sorrows that follow thereon. 
Welcome, everlasting enjoyment of the Father, Son, and Holy 
Ghost, everlasting love, everlasting joy, everlasting life !"* 

According to her sentence, she was conducted, on the 26th of 
January, to the Grassmarket to be executed. An immense crowd 
assembled to witness the scene. Marion Hervey suffered along 
with her. Five women of bad fame were also executed at the 
same time, for the murder of their illegitimate children.! 

On coming to the scaffold, she sung the eighty-fourth psalm, to 
the tune called " The Martyrs," the melody most frequently used 
by the suffering covenanters in singing their psalms, as in some 
parts of Scotland has been handed down by a rude rhyme : — 

' This is the time the martyrs sang, 

When at the gallows-tree they stood, 
When they were gaen to die, 
Their God to glorifie." 

She next read the sixteenth chapter of Mark ; after which she 
desired to pray at the place where she then stood ; but the provost 
took her away to the foot of the ladder, and there she engaged in 
prayer. In this her last trying hour, God, in whom she trusted, 
did not fail to sustain her spirit, and carry her unscathed through 
the fires of martyrdom. The greatness of her peace, and cour- 

* Cloud of Witnesses, pp. 93, 94. 

t "17 and 18 January, 1681. At the criminal court, one Sibilla Bell and her 
mother are sentenced to be hanged, for murdering and strangling a child born by 
the said Sibilla, in adultery. Item, three other women are condemned for the same 
crime committed by them on their bastards; which sentences were accordingly put 
to execution the 26th of January, thereafter, on them. As also two other women 
were then hanged for their opinions and principles, disowning the king and the gov- 
ernment, and adhering to Cameron's treasonable Declaration. They called one of 
them Isabel Alison, from Perth, and the other [Marion] Harvey, brought from Bor- 
rowstounnesa." — Fountainh all's Historical Notices, vol. i., p. 281. 



ISABEL ALISON. 287 

age, and joy, was such as strong faith in a reconciled God, and 
the unclouded hope of heaven, could alone impart. Only one 
thing seemed to wound her delicacy, and that was the circum- 
stance of her being exposed in the company of those five unhap- 
py females, who had murdered their own offspring. But this in- 
dignity she bore with meekness and patience, on reflecting that 
her Savior was crucified between two thieves, as if he had been 
the most criminal of the three. She addressed a few sentences 
to the spectators ; and her last words were, " Farewell, all crea- 
ted comforts ; farewell, sweet Bible, in which I delighted most, 
and which has been sweet to me since I came to prison ; fare- 
well, Christian acquaintances. Now into thy hands I commit my 
spirit, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost !" On her uttering these 
words, the hangman threw her over, and her spirit returned to 
her God and Savior to receive the martyr's crown. 

We are not informed where her body was buried ; but there 
is little doubt that it was disgracefully cast into that spot, in the 
Greyfriars' churchyard, which Avas the receptacle of the dead 
bodies of malefactors, and into which the dead bodies of most of 
the martyrs who suffered death at Edinburgh during the reigns 
of Charles II. and James VII., were consigned. The ignominy 
which once attached to this spot, as the burial-place appropriated 
for condemned robbers and murderers, has been obliterated by 
the sacredness with which, as the last resting-place of nearly a 
hundred martyrs, it is now invested. A large and handsome 
tombstone has been erected in honor of their memory, bearing the 
following inscription : — 

" Halt, passenger, take heed what you do see, 
This tomb doth show for what some men did die, 
Here lies interred the dust of those who stood 
'Gainst perjury, resisting unto blood ; 
Adhering to the Covenants, and laws 
Establishing the same : which was the cause 
Their lives were sacrificed unto the lust 
Of prelates abjured. Though here their dust 
Lies rnixt with murderers and other crew, 
"Whom justice justly did to death pursue : 
But as for them no cause was to be found 
Worthy of death, but only they were sound, 
Constant, and steadfast ; zealous, witnessing, 
For the prerogatives of Christ, their King. 
Which truths were sealed by famous Guthrie's head ; 
And all along to Mr. Renwick's blood. 
They did endure the wrath of enemies, 
Reproaches, torments, deaths, and injuries. 
But yet they 're those, who from such troubles came, 
And now triumph in glory with the Lamb. 

"From May 27th, 1661, when the noble Marquis of Argyle was beheaded, to the 
17th of February, 1688, that Mr. James B,enwick suffered ; were, one way or other, 



288 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

murdered and destroyed for the same cause, about eighteen thousand, of whom 
were execute at Edinburgh about an Hundred of Noblemen, Gentlemen, Minis- 
ters, and Others ; noble martyrs for Jesus Christ. The most of them lie here. 

" For a particular account of the cause and manner of their sufferings, see The 
Cloud of Witnesses, Crookshank's and Defoe's Histories." 

Beneath this inscription is sculptured an open bible, with the 
following passages of scripture engraven : — 

" Rev. vi. 9, 10, 11.— And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar 
the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which 
they held : And they cried will) a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and 
true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth ? 
And white robes were given unto every one of them ; and it was said unto them, 
that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellow-servants also and their 
brethren, that should be killed as they woe should be fulfilled. 

"Rev. vii. 14. — These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have 
washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. 

" Chap. 2d, 10.— Be thou faithful unto death, and [ will give thee a crown of life.'' 



MARION HARVEY. 



Marion Harvey was a servant girl in Borrowstounness. Her 
father, who lived in that village, appears to have been a man of 
piety, and had sworn the National Covenant and Solemn League. 
It may, therefore, be presumed that she had received a religious 
education. But it was not till she had passed her fourteenth 
or fifteenth year that her attention was turned, in good earnest, 
to divine and eternal things. Previous to that period, thoughtless 
about God and her own spiritual interests, she had conducted 
herself like thoughtless young people ; yea, she tells us that, in 
the fourteenth or fifteenth year of her age, she was a " blasphemer 
and sabbath-breaker." About this time, however, a decided 
change took place upon her character. Attracted by curiosity, 
or following the crowd, she began to attend meetings for the 
preaching of the gospel in the fields, which had become very 
frequent in the part of the country where she lived, as well as 
extremely popular — thousands flocking to hear the persecuted 
ministers. These conventicles, as they were nicknamed, though 
denounced by the government, and prohibited, under the penalty 
of death to the minister, and severe penalties to the hearers, 
were accompanied with signal tokens of the Divine approbation ; 
and among the many thousands who, by their instrumentality, 
were brought to the saving knowledge of Christ, was the subject 



MARION HARVEY. 289 

of this notice. The change produced upon her character soon 
became apparent in her life. She left off hearing the curates, 
whose ministry she had formerly attended without scruple ; she 
venerated the name of God, which she had formerly blasphemed ; 
she sanctified the sabbath, which she had formerly desecrated ; 
and she delighted in reading the Bible, which she had formerly 
neglected and undervalued. Among the ministers whom she 
heard at these field meetings were, Mr. John Welsh, Mr. Archi- 
bald Riddell, Mr, Donald Cargill, and Mr. Richard Cameron. 
In her examination before the privy council, she expresses how 
much spiritual profit she had derived from the sermons of these 
worthy men ; and in her dying testimony she says, " I bless the 
Lord that ever I heard Mr. Cargill, that faithful servant of Jesus 
Christ : I bless the Lord that ever I heard Mr. Richard Cameron ; 
my soul has been refreshed with the hearing of him, particularly 
at a communion in Carrick, on these words, in Psalm lxxxv. 8 ; 
' The Lord will speak peace unto his people, and to his saints ; 
but let them not turn again to folly.' " The two last of these 
ministers, as we have seen before, (p. 273), separated from the 
rest of the presbyterian ministers, forming a party by themselves, 
and to this party Marion Harvey was a zealous adherent. 

Like many others in those unhappy times, she fell into the 
hands of the government, through the malignity and avarice of 
a base informer. One of this class, named James Henderson, 
who lived in North Queensferry, and who was habit and repute 
in such infamous transactions, had informed against her,* for 
which he received a sum of money ; and when going out of Ed- 
inburgh, to hear a sermon to be preached in the fields by one of 
the persecuted ministers, she was apprehended on the road, by 
Sergeant Warrock and a party of soldiers, who, it seems, having, 
by ensnaring questions, extorted from her a confession that she 
had attended field conventicles, carried her to Edinburgh, where 
she was imprisoned. Such was the first step of the bloody pro- 
ceedings of which this humble female, who was only about twenty 
years of age, was made the victim. She was next brought 
before the lords of his majesty's privy council, who had nothing 
with which to charge her except that she had attended field con- 
venticles ; and no evidence that she had committed even this 
offence except her own confession. To have inflicted upon her, 
in the absence of other evidence, the penalties of the laws then 

* This person was, as Marion Harvey expresses it, " the Judas that sold Archi- 
bald Stewart and Mr. Skene to the bloody soldiers, for so much money." Both 
these men suffered martyrdom. 

25 



£90 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

in force against such as were guilty of being present at field 
conventicles, would have been flagranti)- unjust. But to rest 
satisfied with the perpetration of even this injustice was too 
lenient a course for the privy council. Apparently with the 
design of extracting from her self-criminating confessions, on 
the ground of which they might take away her life, they pro- 
ceeded to subject her to the same style of inquisitorial examina- 
tion to which they had subjected Isabel Alison ; and they succeeded 
in drawing from her an expression of her approbation of Cargill's 
Covenant, of the Sanquhar Declaration, of the killing of Arch- 
bishop Sharp, in so far as the Lord raised up instruments for 
that purpose, and of the Torwood Excommunication. Her 
examination was conducted with the same inhuman levity as 
that of Isabel Alison. One of the counsellors scornfully said to 
her, that " a rock, a cod, and bobbins, would set her better than 
these debates ;" and " yet," says Wodrow, " they cast them up 
to her, and murder her upon them." Such was the brutality of 
Dalziel that he threatened her with the boot, as she mentions in 
her dying testimony. Her answers to the artful questions of the 
privy council show that, like her fellow-martyr, Isabel Alison, 
she had adopted some extreme opinions ; but her behavior was 
dignified, compared with that of her lordly inquisitors. 

The following are the questions put to her by the privy coun- 
cil, and the answers she returned : — 

P. C. " How long is it since you saw Mr. Donald Cargill?" 

M. H. " I can not tell particularly when I saAv him." 

P. C. " Did you see him within these three months V 

M. H. " It may be I have." 

P. C. " Do you own his covenant ?" 

M. H. "What covenant?" 

Then they read it to her, and she said she owned it. 

P. C. " Do you own the Sanquhar Declaration ?" 

M. H. " Yes." 

P. C. " Do you own these to be lawful ?" 

M. H. " Yes ; because they are according to the Scriptures 
and our covenants, which ye swore yourselves, and my father 
swore them." 

P. C. " Yea ; but the covenant does not bind you to deny the 
king's authority." 

M. H. " So long as the king held the truths of God, which 
he swore, we were obliged to own him ; bnt when he broke his 
oath, and robbed Christ of his kingly rights, which do not belong 
to him, we were bound to disown him and you also." 



MARION HARVEY. 291 

P. C. " Do you know what you say?" 

M. H. "Yes." 

P. C. " Were you ever mad ?" 

M. H. "I have all the wit that ever God gave me ; did you 
see any mad act in me ?" 

P. C. " Where was you born ?" 

M. H. " In Borrowstounness." 

P. C. " What was your occupation there ?" 

M. H. " I served." 

P. C. " Did you serve the woman that gave Mr. Donald Car- 
gill quarters ?" 

M. H. " That is a question which I will not answer." 

P. C. " Who grounded you in these principles ?" 

M. H. " Christ, by his Word." 

P. C. " Did not ministers ground you in these ?" 

M. H. " When the ministers preached the Word, the Spirit of 
God backed and confirmed it to me." 

P. C. " Did you ever see Mr. John Welsh?" 

M. H. " Yes ; my soul hath been refreshed by hearing him." 

P. C. " Have you ever heard Mr. Archibald Riddell ?" 

M. H. " Yes ; and I bless the Lord that ever I heard him." 

P. C. " Did ever they preach to take up arms against the 
king ?" 

M. H. "I have heard them preach to defend the gospel, which 
we are all sworn to do."* 

P. C. " Did you ever swear to Mr. Donald Cargill's Cove- 
nant ?" 

M. H. " No ; but we are bound to own it." 

P. C. " Did you ever hear Mr. George Johnston?"! 

M. H. " I am not concerned with him ; I would not hear him, 
for he is joined in a confederacy with yourselves." 

* Though Welsh. Riddell, and Blackadder, did not join with the Cameronians in 
disowning the authority of the government, yet as the government not only refused 
to protect the nonconformists in hearing the gospel, but sent out the military to dis- 
perse, apprehend, and murder them, when so engaged in the fields, they asserted 
the lawfulness of carrying arms to field conventicles for self-defence, on the principle 
of the law of self-preservation, which is antecedent to all human laws, and which is 
in truth a law of God. 

t Mr. George Johnston was, at the Restoration, minister of Newbottle, from which 
he was ejected for nonconformity, by the act of the privy council at Glasgow, 1662. 
He was a noted field-preacher, but had accepted of the third indulgence granted in 
the middle of the year ]679. This accounts for the somewhat disrespectful tone in 
which Marion Harvey speaks concerning him in her answer to this question. The 
disaffection between the Cameronians, to which party she belonged, and those who 
had accepted the indulgence, was in truth about equally cordial on boih sides: both 
parties, as is almost universally the case in religious controvei'sy, acted very much 
on the lex-talionis principle — " If yon disrespect me, I'll disrespect you." 



292 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

P. C. " Did you hear the excommunication at the Torwood ?" 

M. H. " No ; I could not win to it." 

P. C. " Do you approve of it?" 

M.H. "Yes"." 

P. C. " Do you approve of the killing the Lord St. Andrews ?" 

M. H. " In so far as the Lord raised up instruments to execute 
his just judgments upon him, I have nothing to say against it ; 
for he was a perjured wretch, and a betrayer of the kirk of Scot- 
land !" 

P. C. " What age are you of?" 

M. H. " I can not tell." 

They said among themselves that she would be about twenty 
years of age, and began to regret her case, and said to her, " Will 
you cast away [your] self so ?" 

M. H. " I love my life as well as any of you do, but will not 
redeem it upon sinful terms ; for Christ says, ' He that seeks to 
save his life, shall lose it.' " 

Then one of them asked when the jury should sit ; and some 
other of them answered, " On Monday." 

P. C. " Can you write ?" 

M. H. " Yes." 

P. C. " Will you subscribe what you have said V 

M. H. " No." 

They bade the clerk set down that she could write, but refused 
to subscribe. 

P. C. " Do you desire to converse with one of your minis- 
ters ?" 

M.H. " What ministers ?" 

P. C. " Mr. Riddell." 

M. H. " I will have none of your ministers."* 

For the opinions expressed in these answers, the government 
were resolved to take the life of this inoffensive girl. But as the 
confession of her holding such opinions could only become judi- 
cial and be used in judgment against her when made before the 
lords of justiciary, she was next, in conformity with the usual 
practice, brought before them on the 6th of December, 1680, to 
undergo a similar examination. On her being brought before 
them and examined, the answers she gave were substantially the 
same as those she had given w T hen examined before the privy 
council, and the following is the substance of her answers, as 
drawn up by the clerk of the justiciary court, and subscribed by 
the lords as her confession : — 

* Cloud of Witnesses, pp. 95-97. 



MARION HARVEY. 293 

"Edinburgh, December 6, 1680. 
" In presence of the lords, justice-clerk, and commissioners of 
justiciary, sitting in judgment, compeared Marion Harvey, pris- 
oner, and being examined, adheres to the fourth article of the 
' Fanatics' New Covenant,' the same being read to her, and dis- 
owns the king and his authority, and the authority of the lords 
of justiciary, and adheres and abides at the treasonable Declara- 
tion emitted at Sanquhar, and approves of the same ; and says it 
was lawful to kill the archbishop of St. Andrews, when the Lord 
raised up instruments for that effect, and that he was as misera- 
ble and perjured a wretch as ever betrayed the kirk of Scotland : 
declares that ministers brought them up to these principles, and 
now they have left them ; and that she has heard Mr. John Welsh 
and Mr. Riddell preach up these principles she now owns, and 
blesses God she ever heard them preach so, for her soul has been 
refreshed by them : she approves of Mr. CargilPs excommunica- 
ting the king ; declares she can write, but refuses to sign the 
same. (Sic subscribitur) — 

" Maitland, 
" David Balfour, 
" Ja. Falconer, 
"Roger Hog."* 

On the sole ground of this confession, an indictment was drawn 
up against her, and she was brought to trial on the 17th of Janu- 
ary, 1681. Tried on the same indictment with Isabel Alison, 
she was charged with the same crimes (for which see page 281), 
with the addition that she had " most treasonably approved of the 
execrable excommunication used by Mr. Donald Cargill against 
his sacred sovereign at Torwood, upon the day of [Sep- 
tember] last, and likewise owned and approved of the killing 
of the archbishop of St.. Andrews as lawful, declaring that he 
was as miserable a wretch as ever betrayed the kirk of Scot- 
land." 

Her indictment having been read, she was asked if she 
pleaded guilty to the charges it contained, to which she answered 
in the affirmative. They next successively read the " Sanquhar 
Declaration," and the " Queensferry Paper," asking her at the 
close of the reading of each paper if she owned it, to which she 
answered that she did. She then protested before the court that 
they had nothing to say against her as to matter of fact, but only 
that she owned Christ and his truth ; to which they made no re- 

* Records of the Justiciary Court. 
25* 



294 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

ply, but called the jiuy, who, as we have seen before, showed 
considerable reluctance to appear.* She offered no objections 
to any of the jury, but, on their taking their places, she ad- 
dressed them in these words : " Now beware what you are 
doing, for they have nothing to say against me, but onlv for own- 
ing Jesus Christ and his persecuted truths ; for you will get my 
blood upon your heads." 

The court then proceeded with the evidence against her. But 
the only proof which the prosecutor, his majesty's advocate, could 
adduce, was her own confession before the lords of justiciary. 
This confession, as they had taken it down, was accordingly 
read ; and being asked if she adhered to it, she objected to the 
clause which represented her as having said that the ministers 
had taught her these principles, observing that what she said 
was, that it was Christ by his Word who taught her ; but she ad- 
hered to the rest of her confession as it was read. The king's 
advocate then addressed the jury. He told them, as has been 
stated before,! that much dealing had been employed with her 
and Isabel Alison, and that ministers had been sent to them in 
prison, to endeavor, if possible, to reclaim them, but that every 
effort had proved unavailing. " We are not concerned with you 
and your ministers," said Marion, sharply. The advocate, turn- 
ing to her, replied, " It is not for religion that we are pursuing 
you. but for treason." — " It is for religion that you arc pursuing 
me," she instantly retorted ; " and I am of the same religion that 
you are all sworn to be of. I am a true presbyterian in my judg- 
ment."' On the conclusion of the advocate's address, the jury 
retired for consultation, but soon returned to court and delivered 
their verdict, unanimously finding Marion Harvey " guilty, con- 
form to her confession of adherence to the fourth article of the 
' Fanatics' New Covenant,' and to the ' Declaration at Sanquhar,' 
and to the ' Bond of Combination ;' but as actor and receiptor of 
rebels, they find it not proven." 

The lords delayed the pronouncing of the sentence upon her 
till Friday, at twelve o'clock, being the 21st of the current month. 
On the minute of the day being read, she said, " I charge you 
before the tribunal of God, as ye shall answer there ! for ye have 
nothing to say against me but for my owning the persecuted gos- 
pel." 

On the 21st, she was again brought before the court to receive 
her sentence, which was, that she " be taken to the Grassmarket 
of Edinburgh upon Wednesday next, the 26th instant, betwixt 
* See notice of Isabel Alison, pp. 282, 283. t Ibid. 



MARION HARVEY. 295 

two and four o'clock in the afternoon, and there to be hanged on 
a gibbet, till she be dead, and all her lands, heritages, goods, and 
gear whalsomever, to be escheat and inbrought to our sovereign 
lord's use, which was pronounced for doom."* 

During the whole of the proceedings now detailed, Marion 
betrayed no symptoms of wavering, hesitation, or timidity ; and 
now when her clays on earth were numbered — when she had 
only five brief days to live — she maintained to the last her 
Christian fortitude. The testimony of her conscience, that she 
had done nothing worthy of death, and that she was in reality 
doomed to die on the scaffold for her adherence to the truths of 
Christ, was to her a source of great satisfaction. In her dying 
testimony, which she left behind her, dated " from the tolbooth 
of Edinburgh, the Woman House, on the east side of the prison, 
January 21st, 1681," she begins as follows : " Christian friends 
and acquaintances — I being to lay down my life on Wednesday 
next, January 26, I thought fit to let it be known to the world 
wherefore I lay down my life, and to let it be seen that I die not 
as a fool, or an evil-doer, or a busy-body, in other men's matters. 
No ; it is for adhering to the truths of Jesus Christ, and avow- 
ing him to be king in Zion, and head of his church ; and the 
testimony against the ungodly laws of men, and their robbing 
Christ of his rights, and usurping his prerogative royal, which I 
durst not but testify against." 

Nor was she deprived of those heavenly consolations which 
have so often sustained the soul of the martyr, and made him 
triumph over death. The presence of a reconciled God, and the 
peace and comfort which he spoke to her soul, divested death 
of its terrors, and inspired her with a holy willingness and cheer- 
fulness to surrender her life, in testimony of her love to him and his 
cause. " I desire," says she, in the same document, " to bless 
and magnify the Lord for my lot, and may say, he hath brought 
me to the wilderness to allure me there, and speak comfortably 
to my soul. It was but little of him I knew when I came to 
prison ; but now he has said to me, because he lives, I shall 
live also. And he has told me, ' I am he that blotteth out thine 
iniquity, for my own name's sake.' Kind has he been to me 
since he brought me out to witness for him. I have never 
sought anything from him that was for his glory, since I came 
to prison, but he granted me my desire. For the most part I 
have found him in everything that hath come in my way, order- 
ing it himself for his own glory. And now I bless him that 
* Records of the Justiciary Court. Cloud of Witnesses, p. 97. 



296 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

thoughts of death are not terrible to me. He hath made me as 
willing to lay down my life for him as ever I was willing to live 
in the world. And now, ye that are his witnesses, be not afraid 
to venture on the cross of Christ, for his yoke is easy, and his 
burden light. For many times I have been made to think 
strange what made folks cast at the cross of Christ, that hath 
been so light to me that I have found no burden of it at all ; he 
bore me and it both. Now let not the frowns of men, nor their 

flatteries, put you from your duty It is my grief that I 

have not been more faithful for my master, Christ. All his deal- 
ings with me have been in love and in mercy. His corrections 
have been all in love and free grace. Oh, free love ! I may 
say I am a brand plucked out of the fire ; I am a limb of the 
devil plucked out from his fireside. Oh! I am made to wonder 
and admire at his condescending love." And she concludes 
with these words : " Now farewell, lovely and sweet Scriptures, 
which were aye my comfort in the midst of all my dillicuUies ! 
farewell, faith ! farewell, hope ! farewell, wanderers, who have 
been comfortable to my soul, in the hearing of them commend 
Christ's love ! Farewell, brethren ! farewell, sisters ! farewell, 
Christian acquaintances! farewell, sun, moon, and stars! And 
now welcome, my lovely and heartsome Christ Jesus, into whose 
hands I commit my spirit throughout all eternity. I may say, 
few and evil have the days of the years of my pilgrimage been, 
I being about twenty years of age."* 

There is one thing in the dying testimony of this female which 
we could wish had been modified, and that is the paragraph in 
which she leaves her blood upon the tyrant on the throne, upon 
the duke of York, who was sitting in the council the first day on 
which she was examined, and upon all others who were con- 
cerned in her death, whom she particularly names. This was 
done by others of the Cameronian martyrs ; and it was done, we 
believe, not in a spirit of revenge, but simply to impress, if pos- 
sible, upon their murderers a conviction of their guilt, and to 
awaken them to repentance. f In proof of this, we may quote 
the testimony of a very intelligent gentleman, who had opportu- 
nities of being very much among the Cameronian party who suf- 
fered between the years 1680 and 1685, and who conversed 
with most, if not all, who suffered till August, 1685 — that of Mr. 
Gray, of Chryston ; and his testimony is the more valuable from 

* Cloud of Witnesses, pp. 93-101. 

t The words of Jeremiah, in his address to tbe prince9 of .Tudah (chap. xxvi. 15), 
have been adduced in vindication of these martyrs on this head. 
21 



MARION HARVEY. 297 

h:s having belonged, not to the Cameronian, but to the moderate 
presbyterians. In a letter to Wodrow, he says, " As to their 
leaving their blood upon their enemies in general, or upon par- 
ticular persons accessory to their trouble, I could never under- 
stand that they meant more by it than the fastening a conviction 
upon a brutish, persecuting generation, who vainly justified 
themselves as acting by law, and inferred that not they, but the 
legislature, were answerable, if any injustice was done."* This 
explains the ground upon which Marion Harvey and others left 
their blood upon their persecutors, and it amply vindicates them 
from acting under the impulse of a revengeful spirit. Something 
more, however, is required of the Christian than the mere ab- 
sence of revenge toward his enemies ; he is bound from the 
heart to forgive them. We do not affirm that, this female martyr, 
and other Cameronian martyrs, did not forgive their persecutors. 
We are persuaded of the contrary. They knew the New Tes- 
tament too well not to know that the forgiveness of enemies is 
an imperative Christian duty, and they possessed too much of 
the Christian spirit not to exercise it. But they erred in not 
being sufficiently forward to express this feeling, and in not giv- 
ing it prominence in their dying testimonies. If, instead of the 
clause to which we are now objecting, they had substituted a 
clause cordially forgiving their persecutors, it would have been 
more in harmony with the precepts of the New Testament, and 
it would have been more like Jesus, who, on the cross, showed 
how intensely forgiving his heart was, when he prayed his holy 
Father to forgive his murderers, and urged in their behalf the 
only extenuating plea of which their crime admitted — " Father, 
forgive them, for they know not what they do." Nor is it un- 
worthy of notice, that had they taken this course, they would 
have deprived their enemies of an occasion which they eagerly 
laid hold on, and over which they gloated, of charging them, 
falsely, indeed, but still with some degree of color, of being bait- 
ed into savageness and stubbornness, of being actuated by vindic- 
tive feelings, and of mistaking these feelings for emotions of piety. 
On the day of her execution, Marion not only retained her com- 
posure, but experienced the utmost joy in the anticipation of fu- 
ture felicity. When coming out of the tolbooth door to go to the 
council-house, whence she was to be conducted to the place of 
execution, she said, to some friends attending her, in a tone of 
heavenly joy and ecstacy, at once surprising and delightful to 
them, " Behold, I hear my beloved saying unto me, Arise my 

* Wodrow's History, vol. iii., p. 214. 



298 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

. ^/ ■ 

love, my fair one, and come away." In the council-house, a base 

and heartless attempt was made, by Bishop Paterson, to disturb 
her tranquillity, and the tranquillity of her fellow-sufferer in the 
same cause, Isabel Alison. This man, who had an active hand 
in bringing them to the scaffold, and who, with a meanness and 
wanton cruelty worthy of a persecutor, had brought a curate 
with him to the council-house, for the express purpose of annoy- 
ing them, said to Marion Harvey, " Marion, you said you would 
never hear a curate, now you shall be forced to hear one ;" upon 
which he called on the curate to pray. This cruel insult, offered 
to them when placed in circumstances calculated to excite the 
deepest commiseration, was nipt by the sufferers with becoming 
spirit. They made no reply m the bishop, but as soon as the 
curate began to pray, Marion Aid to her fellow-martyr, " Come, 
Isabel, let us sing the twentyJfhird psalm,"' which they accord- 
ingly did — Marion repeating ttie psalm line by line without book 
— which drowned the curate's voice, and confounded both him 
and the bishop. When they were brought to the scaffold, a sec- 
ond attempt was made to harass their feelings and disturb their 
composure in their last moments, by one of the prelatic curates 
of the city, who came to pray with the five women condemned 
to be executed at the same time for child-murder. This man, 
who appears to have had neither correct views of religion, nor 
humane feelings, flattered these five murderers with the hope of 
heaven, though they had given no evidences of repentance, while 
he vehemently railed on our two martyrs, and remorselessly told 
them that they were on the road to damnation. But they re- 
mained unmoved ; " the peace of God, which passeth all under- 
standing, kept their hearts and minds through Christ Jesus." On 
the scaffold, Marion sung the eighty-fourth psalm, and read the 
third chapter of Malachi ; after which she shortly addressed the 
vast crowd of spectators " I am come here to-day," she said, 
" for avowing Christ to be the head of his church, and king in 
Zion. O seek him, sirs! seek him, and ye shall find him; I 
sought him and found him ; I held him and would not let him go." 
Then she briefly narrated the manner in which she was appre- 
hended, and the leading questions put to her by the privy coun- 
cil, with the answers she returned. " They asked me if I ad- 
hered to the papers gotten at the ferry ? I said I did own them, 
and all the rest of Christ's truths. If I would have denied any 
of them, my life was in my offer ; but I durst not do it, no. not 
for my soul. Ere I wanted an hour of his presence, I had rather 
die ten deaths. I durst not speak against him, lest I should have 



MARION HARVEY. 299 

sinned against God. I adhere to the Bible and Confession of 
Faith, Catechisms, and Covenants, which are according to this 
Bible." But, in her dying speech, she chiefly spoke of God's 
love to her, and in commendation of free grace. " Much of the 
Lord's presence," said she, " have I enjoyed in prison ; and now 
I bless the Lord the snare is broken, and we are escaped." 
When she came to the foot of the ladder, she engaged in pray- 
er ; and, on going up the ladder, she exclaimed, " O my fair one, 
my lovely one, come away ;" and sitting down upon it, she said, 
" I am not come here for murder, for they have no matter of fact 
to charge me with, but only my judgment. I am about, twenty 
years of age ; at fourteen or fifteen I was a hearer of the curates, 
and indulged ; and while I was a hearer of these, I was a blas- 
phemer and sabbath-breaker, and a chapter of the Bible was a 
burden to me ; but since I heard this persecuted gospel, I durst 
not blaspheme nor break the sabbath, and the Bible became my 
delight." These were her last words ; for on her having uttered 
them, the hangman, at the orders of the provost, cast her over. 
Her body, as a mark of reprobation, was buried, it is probable, 
in the Greyfriars' churchyard, Edinburgh, along Avith the body 
of her fellow-martyr, Isabel Alison,* in the spot appropriated as 
a burying-place for the most flagrant criminals ; but, whatever in- 
dignities were put upon her mortal part, her spirit, brought out 
of great tribulation, was, doubtless, put in possession of that ex- 
ceeding great reward reserved for those who " overcome by the 
blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony, and who 
love not their lives unto the death." 

* The following notices of Marion Harvey and Isabel Alison, written by a con- 
temporary belonging to the government party, may be interesting to the reader : 
" 2Gth January, 1681. There were hanged at Edinburgh two women of ordinary 
rank, for their uttering treasonable words, and other principles and opinions con- 
trary to all our government ; the one was named Janet [Isabel] Alison, a Perth 
woman, the other [Marion] Harvey, from Borrowstounness ; they were of Came- 
ron's faction, bigot and sworn enemies to the king and the bishops ; of the same 
stamp with Rathillet, Skene, Stewart, and Potter; of whom snpra,p. 4, et seq., 
where we debate how far men (for women are scarce to be honored with that mar- 
tyrdom, as they think it) are to be punished capitally for their bare perverse judg- 
ment without acting. Some thought the threatening to drown them piivately in the 
North Looh, without giving them the credit of a public suffering, would have more 
effectually reclaimed them nor any arguments which were used; and the bring- 
ing them to a scaffold but disseminates the infection. However, the women proved 
very obstinate, and for all the pains taken, would not once acknowledge the king 
to be their lawful prince, but called him a perjured bloody man. At the stage, one 
of them told so long as she followed and heard the curates, she was a swearer, sab- 
bath-breaker, and with much aversion read the Scriptures, but found much joy upon 
her spirit since she followed the conventicle- preachers, There were five other mis- 
erable women executed with them, for infant-murder. See with what wonderful 
patience most execrable heretics suffer, in Baker's Chronicle, in the reign of King 
Henry II., p. 58, and of Henry III., p. 89."— Fountainhall's Hist. Ob., pp. 26, 27. 



300 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 



HELEN JOHNSTON, 

LADY GRADEN. 

Helen Johxston was the daughter of the well-known Sir 
Archibald Johnston, Lord Warriston, who acted so prominent a 
part in the civil and ecclesiastical transactions of his day, and 
who at last fell a martyr to the cause of civil and religious free- 
dom. Lord Warriston was not less distinguished for personal 
piety than for public patriotism. An anecdote, which strikingly 
illustrates how completely, in the exercise of prayer, his mind 
was abstracted from surrounding objects, and concentrated on the 
great object of religious worship, has been preserved by Wod- 
row. " Mrs. Lilias Stewart," says that indefatigable memorial- 
ist, " tells me that my Lord Warriston was very frequently in 
her father's house, Sir James Stewart's ; and when he came be- 
fore dinner, he [Sir James] usually desired him to pray in the 
family, and he made no more ceremony to do it than one minis- 
ter would do in another's house. That it was remarked of him, 
that in prayer he was the most staid, and swallowed up in the 
work, of any man in his time. He heard or noticed nothing 
when praying. One day in his family, his lady being indisposed, 
she fell into a swarff,* in the room beside him, and continued 
some time in it; and the servants observing [it], lifted her up, 
and laid her in bed. All this was done beside him, and he knew 
nothing of it till all was over and duty ended. "f Like the mar- 
quis of Argyll, he may be said to have fallen a victim to the re- 
venge of Charles II., who never forgave him for the fidelity with 
which, on one occasion, he reproved him for his vices. Writing 
in January, 1713, Wodrow says : " My author [Mr. James Stir- 
ling, minister of Barony parish, Glasgow], has it from Mr. Oli- 
phant, who was my Lord Warriston's chaplain at the time, that 
one day he told Mr. Oliphant he was going to use freedom with 
the king. Mr. Oliphant dissuaded him from it, but he took his 
cloak about him and went away, and did use freedom with him. 
The king seemed to take all well, and gave him very good words, 
calling him ' Good Lord Warriston, but bore a rooted grudge at 
him alter that, and prosecuted it to his death. "J His enemies, 
like bloodhounds, dogged his footsteps on the continent, and suc- 

* That is, a swoon or fainting-fit. 

f Wodrovrs Analecta, vol. ii., p. 145. J Ibid., vol. ii., p. 145. 



LADY GRADEN. 301 

ceeding their object, brought him home, to be tried, condemned, 
and executed as a traitor. " His natural temper was just, gene- 
rous, self-denying ; insomuch that he left behind him but a very- 
small provision for a family of thirteen children, though for many 
years he had been intrusted with the whole government of Scot- 
land."* 

Thus the subject of this notice enjoyed the inestimable bles- 
sing of a sound Christian education, and of a holy example under 
her father's roof. From her cradle, she had been surrounded 
with the genial influences of piety, as well as trained to the love 
of liberty. With the principles of the second reformation church, 
all her feelings and early associations were inseparably linked. 
The summary overthrow of the presbyterian church by the gov- 
ernment of Charles II., and the grinding oppression by which it 
was attempted to force the consciences of men and women to act 
in matters of religion in conformity with the wishes of the mon- 
arch, she could not then, Avith such impressions and sentiments, 
but regard with aversion and distrust. And this aversion and 
distrust must have been aggravated from the relentless cruelty 
with which, from the moment of the restoration, her father was 
persecuted, till he was put to death as a traitor on the scaffold. 

In the summer of 1659, Miss Johnston was married to Mr. 
George Hume or Home, proprietor of an estate called Graden, 
in the south of Scotland. f Hence, according to the courtesy of 
those times, he was generally called Graden, and his wife Lady 
Graden. Their marriage contract is dated 10th May, 1659. In 
this contract, made with consent of several persons therein speci- 
fied on both sides, Mr. Hume, " in contemplation of the marriage 
then contracted, bound and obliged himself, his heirs, executors, 
and successors, to provide and secure the said Helen Johnston, 
his future spouse, during all the days of her lifetime (in case she 
should survive him), in the sum of two thousand merks Scots| 
yearly, free of all burdens whatsoever, and that out of the first 
and readiest of his fortunes."! 

* Life of Bishop Burnet, by his Son, in Burnet's History of His Own Times, vol. 
vi., p. 235. The bishop's mother was sister to Lord Warriston. His father was an 
episcopalian, " but his mother, who was very eminent for her piety and virtue, was 
a warm zealot for the presbyterian discipline; her education that way had been 
very strict." — Wodrow's Analecta, vol. ii., p. 145. 

t In Acts of Scottish Parliament, vol. vi., p. 85, he is designated " an heritor of the 
parish of Earlston." 

t That is, about 1117. sterling. 

|| Commissary Records of Edinburgh, 16th December, 1691. Mr. Hume was a 
man of very considerable wealth. At the time of his death, the debts owing to him 
were 121,302/. 5s. Wd. Scots ; and his free gear, the debts due by himself being de- 
ducted, was 105,302/. Scots. 

26 



302 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

Mr. Hume, like his wife, was a warm supporter of the princi- 
ples of the covenanters, and also suffered in their defence. In 
1678, being in Northumberland, he was made prisoner in Crock- 
ome, a village upon the English border, by a party of English 
soldiers who were in search of Scottish nonconformists, several 
of whom had taken shelter from persecution in Northumberland. 
He was carried first to Lord Hume, and thence to Hume castle. 
His apprehension was the occasion of the scuffle in which Thomas 
Ker of Heyhope (whose elegy was written by Colonel William 
Cleland, and is inserted in Naphtali), was killed by Colonel 
Struthers' party.* How long he was kept prisoner is uncertain. 

YVe, however, find him among the insurgents at Bothwell 
bridge, in June, 1679.f His name appears in a list of persons 
who had been " in the late rebellion," contained in a proclama- 
tion of the privy council, dated June 26, discharging all his ma- 
jesty's subjects, whether men or women, to assist, harbor, reset, 
•correspond with, hide, or conceal the said rebels and traitors, 
under the pain of treason.^ He did not long survive, having 
died in October that year.|| 

It was not till 1684, when nearly twenty-four years of misrule 
and oppression had passed over our ill-fated country, that we 
meet with the name of Lady Graden as a sufferer in the cause 
of presbytery. But there is no reason to believe that she had 
not at an earlier period become obnoxious to the government, on 
account of her religious principles. The severity with which 
she was then treated, seems rather like the punishment inflicted 
on an old offender, than the punishment inflicted on one who had 
offended only for the first time. The primary instrument of her 
oppression was Henry Ker, of Graden, who, in 1684, held the 
office of sheriff-depute of Teviotdale, and who recklessly im- 
posed the most exorbitant fines on such gentlemen and ladies in 
his bounds as patronized the cause of nonconformity-.*^ By this 

* See Appendix, No. VII. t M'Crie's Memoirs of Veitch, &c, p. 463. 

t Wod row's History, vol. iii., p. 115. 

|| Commissary Records of Edinburgh, 16th December, 1691. 

§ Wodrow's History, vol. iv.. p. 52. So reckless was be in imposing fines, lhat 
even the government, rapacious as it was, found it necessary, from the complaints 
made against him, to institute inquiries as to bis proceedings. On the 7th of No- 
vember, 1684, the privy council ordained one of their clerks, Mr. Colin MKenzie, 
to write to him the following letter, summoning him to appear before them : " Hir, 
there having been several suspensions, diligences, and petitions, given into the coun- 
cil, by persons fined by you as sheriff-depute of Roxburgh, and the council finding 
it necessary, before they proceed to consider thereof, that you be present to vindi- 
cate your procedure, tbere being very much alleged against the legality thereof, and 
which they have reason the rather to suspect, since yon, being cited to have com- 
peared before them, have neglected so to do ; and therefore they have commanded 
me to require you, in their name, to attend them upon the first Thursday of Decern- 



LADY GRADEN. 303 

unscrupulous man she was fined in twenty-six thousand and odd 
pounds Scots,* as we learn from the report of the committee for 
public affairs given in to the council, September 10, 1684. In 
that report, it is also stated that he had fined Lady Greenhead,! in 
the sum of sixteen thousand and odd pounds Scots,! but that the 
committee found reason to sist execution as to her.|| The coun- 
cil approved of the report.^ The decreet against Lady Graden 
not having been preserved, we are unable precisely to state the 
charges against her which it contained ; but Ave can not be far 
from the truth in supposing that, like the decreets against ladies 
in similar circumstances, it charged her with deserting the pub- 
lic ordinances in her own parish church, with haunting and fre- 
quenting rebellious field-conventicles, with harboring and reset- 
ting rebels, &c, to the great scandal of religion and contempt of 
the government. As the fine imposed upon her, and with the 
approbation of the government, was a very heavy one, much heav- 
ier than that imposed upon Lady Greenhead, or indeed upon any 
other person in that part of the country, it is evident that she 
was a marked person ; and there is little doubt that this severity 
was prompted by the malignant hatred which these wicked rulers 
cherished toward the memory of her father. As James VI. be- 
lieved, that in the whole race of the Knoxes and Welshes there 
lived the germ of enmity to bishops, so the persecutors, during 
the reigns of his grandsons, seem to have equally believed, that 
the essence of presbytery had been so concentrated in Archi- 
bald Johnston of Warriston, as to taint with an inveterate hostil- 
ity to prelacy the whole of his race. 

But our chief object in introducing this lady to the notice of 
the reader is, to give a specimen of the Christian sympathy and 
heroism which ladies often displayed in those trying times, under 
the sufferings of their near and dear relatives, in the cause of re- 

ber next peremptory, and to bring along with you the decreets and sentences pro- 
nounced by you against persons within your shire guilty of irregularities and dis- 
orders, and the grounds and warrants thereof; as also your procurator -fiscal, clerk, 
and officers of court, or any other executors of your summons, precepts, or warn- 
ings, to be considered by the council, and herein you are not to fail, as you will be 
answerable at your peril. I am your affectionate friend and servant (Sic. sub), 
Colin M'Kenzie.'" — Register of Acts of Privy Council. 

"* That is, 2,166/. 13s id. and odds, sterling. 

t The lady of Sir William Ker of Greenhead. 

% That is, 1,333/. 6s. 8d. and odds, sterling. 

|| Execution was sisted as to her in consequence of a petition which her husband, 
Sir William Ker, presented to the council, desiring that, as " the decreet was pro- 
nounced in absence, and that the sum is very exorbitant, his lady might be reponed 
to her oath, and execution, in the meantime, sisted." — Register of Acts of Privy 
Council, 10th September, 1684. 

§ Wodrow's History, vol. iv., p. 52. 



304 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

ligion and liberty. The part which she acted toward Robert 
Baillie of Jerviswood, who was her cousin-german, and also her 
brother-in-law,* during his sickness when in prison, and at the 
time of his trial and execution, is worthy of all praise. Robert 
Baillie of Jerviswood, than whom the martyrology of the perse- 
cution does not embrace a more excellent man, was descended 
on the mother's side from our illustrious reformer John Knox, bis 
mother having been the grand-daughter of the reformer.! From 
boyhood he had experienced the power of religion. He bad 
been heard to say that God had begun to work upon him when 
he was about ten years of age, and that Christ crucified had been 
his daily study and constant delight. To great natural parts, 
extensive information, and dignity of manner, he added gentle- 
ness of disposition and calm benevolence, combined with warm 
zeal for the protestant religion, and incorruptible integrity .:{; By 
the unprincipled government of his day he had all along been 
regarded with suspicion and distrust, and at last they found a 
pretext for taking away his life. Being in London at the time 
of the discovery of the Rye-House Plot in 1683, || he and several 
other Scotch gentlemen at London were made prisoners on suspi- 
cion of being concerned in that plot. Baillie had indeed attended 
some meetings held in London, by several English and Scotch 
patriots of rank and influence, for the purpose of concerting meas- 
ures for delivering their country from tyranny, and preventing 
the duke of York, who was a professed papist, from succeeding 
to the throne in the event of his brother's death ; but he never 

• Baillie's mother was sister to Lord Warriston, and he was married to one of 
Lord Warristou's daughters. His wile was a lady worthy of her lineage. Some 
ascribed his disaffection to the government to her influence over him. "His mar- 
rying Johnston of Warristou's daughter,' - says Fonntainhall, " first alienated his 
mind from the government." — (Historical Notice?, vol. ii, p. 594.) Jt may here he 
stated that Baillie had a sister who was married to the celebrated Mr. Andrew 
Gray, son to Sir William Gray, lord-provost of Edinburgh, and minister of the Ontef 
High church, Glasgow. Mr. Gray was licensed 1653, ordained on the 3d of No- 
vember that year, and died in January, 1656. His relict afterward became the wife 
of Mr. George Hutchison, one of the ministers of Edinburgh at the restoration, and 
afterward indulge:! minister at Irvine. Baillie had another sister who was mar- 
ried to Mr. James Kirk ton, one of the ministers of Edinburgh after the revolution. — 
Wodrow's Analecta, vol. i., p. 168. 

t M'Crie's Life of Knox, fifth edition, vol. ii , pp. 356, 357. 
■ ; Wodrow says that he " had a sort of majesty in his face and stateliness in his 
carriage.'' — Analecta, vol. iii , p. 78. 

|| He had gone up to London on the business of the Carolina settlement. A num- 
ber of Scottish gentlemen having, in consequence of the intolerable oppres-i >>n at 
home, projected a settlement in Carolina in America, where such of their country- 
men as chose to emigrate might enjoy that freedom of conscience which there was 
no prospect of their enjoying in Scotland, they sent commissioners to London, among 
whom was Baillie, in the close of the year 1632, to deal with the government about 
that matter. 



LADY GRADEN. 305 

dreamed of accomplishing this end, desirable as it was, by mur- 
dering the king and the duke of York, which was falsely given 
out by the government as the great object of these meetings.* 
He and his Scotch fellow-prisonersf were, in the end of October, 

1683, sent down from London to Scotland; and on their arrival 
at Leith, they were conducted to the tolbooth of Edinburgh . Bail- 
lie continued to languish in prison, till, being tried for high-trea- 
son, he was brought in guilty by a packed jury, and condemned 
to the gallows. 

It was during these, his last sufferings, that Lady Graden dis- 
played, in the part which she acted toward Baillie, whom she 
highly respected and honored for the excellence of his Christian 
character, that active sympathy, that self-sacrificing spirit, and 
that noble heroism, to which we have referred. For a consider- 
able period previous to his martyrdom, his rigorous imprisonment 
had so undermined his health that he was, to all appearance, in 
a dying condition. In these circumstances, he found in this 
lady a friend indeed. To her he owed that solace and support 
which kind and unremitting attentions administer under the pain, 
anxiety, languor, and fears, which always attend sickness ; and 
which would especially attend it in his case, when he was con- 
fined to a prison, and when his life was thirsted after by the un- 
relenting malice of his enemies. It was about the month of July, 

1684, that his illness assumed a dangerous form. To his lady 
and friends this was a cause of great anxiety and alarm. It 
would have been highly gratifying to her had she been allowed 
to remove him for a time to her own chambers ; but, though dis- 
ease was apparently hurrying him to the grave, she could not 
prevail upon the lords of the privy council to listen so far to the 
voice of pity as relentingly to allow him to be removed from 
prison ; for they were determined not to forego their hold of a 
victim whom they so deeply hated, and whose valuable estate 
would, when forfeited, be so rich a prize. Being then unable to 
obtain for him a temporary release, she was very desirous that, 
in his present condition, he might have a constant attendant in 
prison. Gladly would she have devoted herself, with all the 

* Bnillie and his Scotch friends had, in fact, broken off all connection with the 
English conspirators before the conspiracy was discovered, convinced that from the 
want of unity ot'views, spirit, and decision, it could not succeed; nor had they ever 
matured any plan of their own. — Carstairs' State Papers, pp. 10-14. 

t These were — Sir Husb Campbell of Cesnock, and Sir George Campbell, his 
son ; Sir William Muir of Rowallan, and William Muir, his son; John Crawford 
of Crawfordlaud; William Fairly of Bruntsfield; Alexander Monro of Beancrofts; 
William Spence; Robert Murray ; John Hepburn; William Carstairs. — Register 
of Acts of Privy Council, 5th November, 1G83. 
26* 



306 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

tenderness of her faithful heart, to the office of nursing him in his 
sickness ; and her presence would doubtless have been more 
agreeable to him than that of any other friend. But for this of- 
fice the infirm state' of her own health unfitted her. Her sister, 
Lady Graden, however, a woman of active habits, and of a gen- 
erous and exalted mind, engaged, with the greatest pleasure, 
should the privy council grant permission, to attend the sick-bed 
of her cousin and brother-in-law. Accordingly, she presented a 
petition to the council, praying that this permission might be 
granted her. The council, upon inquiry, finding that Baillie was 
dangerously ill, allowed her, in answer to her petition, to attend 
him, on condition of her remaining a close prisoner with him. 
The act of council is as follows : — 

"Edinburgh, August 14, 1684. 
" The lords of his majesty's privy council having considered 
an address made by Helen Johnston, Lady Graden, supplicating 
that she might be made close prisoner with the laird of Jervis- 
Avood, to wait upon him, he being at present in a sick and dan- 
gerous condition, with the report of the lord-present of the ses- 
sion, and justice-clerk, who were ordered to visit him, bearing 
that they found him in a very dangerous and sickly condition, do 
allow the said Lady Graden to be close prisoner with the said 
Jerviswood, and appoint a macer of council to take her imme- 
diately to that room, within the prison of Edinburgh where the 
said Jerviswood is now prisoner ; and appoint the keepers of the 
tolbooth, before she enter the said room, to take narrow inspec- 
tion that she have no letters or papers upon her body, and if she 
have, that they secure the same; and after she has entered the 
said room, ordain the foresaid keepers to keep her close prisoner 
therein, in the same way and manner that the said Jerviswood 
was ordered to be kept, in every respect, until the council further 
order, as they will be answerable at their highest peril."* 

To these restrictions Lady Graden gladly submitted, that she 
might minister to the comfort of her friend. Over his sick-bed 
she watched with the most affectionate and assiduous care, ad- 
ministering to him those comforts which his situation required ; 
and nothing which warm sympathy and overflowing kindness 
could suggest, was wanting to alleviate his distress. Lady Jer- 
viswood, though unable, as we have said, from the delicate state 
of her health, to undertake the entire charge of attending him, 
was desirous of being occasionally allowed to visit him. She 

* Decreets of Privy CoudciI. 



LADY GRADEN. 307 

accordingly presented a petition to the privy council, praying that 
this favor might be granted her ; and the council, at their meeting 
on the 18th of August, " allow her to have access to her husband 
with any of the physicians who are to visit him, and to stay in 
the room with him so long as the physicians stay, and no longer, 
during which stay she is not to utter or speak anything but in 
audience of the physicians present."* It would appear that, 
some short time after, she was allowed to remain constantly with 
him in the prison, subject to the same stringent rules as her sis- 
ter, Lady Graden, though this permission continued only for a 
brief period. f 

While ihus enjoying the society of his wife and of his sister- 
in-law, the cup of Baillie's affliction was greatly sweetened. Not 
only was his every wish anticipated, and his sickness alleviated 
by the gentle language and engaging offices of love, but his inter- 
course with these beloved friends was, from the congeniality of 
their minds, sanctified and endeared by religion, in which all of 
them sought and found their greatest enjoyment, and their most 
effectual solace under all their afflictions. His confinement and 
sickness were thus deprived of more than half their bitterness, 
and, surrounded by his nearest and best-beloved relations, he felt 
that his prison was in some measure like home. But his sister- 
in-law had not been with him much above three weeks, and his 
lady not so long, when the privy council issue orders for their 
being removed from him. The act of council is as follows : — 

"Edinburgh, 10th September, 1684. 
" Whereas, the lords of his majesty's privy council were for- 
merly pleased to allow Mr. Robert Baillie of Jerviswood's wife, 
and the Lady Graden, to be close prisoners in the room with 
him, he being then under some indisposition of body, they have 
now thought fit that they be removed from him, and he continued 
close prisoner by himself as formerly ; and therefore do hereby 
require the keepers of the tolbooth of Edinburgh, forthwith to 
remove the said Lady Jerviswood and the Lady Graden forth 
of the room where they are now close prisoners with the said 
Jerviswood, and to keep him close prisoner, and not to suffer 
them or any other person to have access to, or converse with, or 
speak to him, till further order, as they will be answerable. "| 

* Register of Acts of Privy Council. 

t On the 30th of August, the council also allowed Baillie's advocates and friends 
to have free access to him until Thursday, and granted warrants to the keepers of 
the tolbooth for that effect, they being always answerable for the safe custody of his 
person.— Register of Acts of Privy Council. % Ibid. 



308 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

On the removal of these dear friends, Baillie continued alone 
in prison for nearly two months. His recovery had been very 
partial, and from the want of their kind attentions, and as the 
cold weather set in, his bodily illness greatly increased, and as- 
sumed so dangerous a form as to render it indispensable for him 
to have a constant attendant. His own lady would again wil- 
lingly have shared in his imprisonment and ministered to him ; 
but the infirm state of her health rendered it impossible for her 
to undergo the confinement and fatigue, to which, in the perform- 
ance of such duties, she would have been subjected. But her 
sister, Lady Graden, was ready as cheerfully as ever to supply 
her place, should permission be granted her by the privy council. 
Accordingly, Lady Jerviswood presented a petition to the coun- 
cil, " in name and behalf of her husband, showing, that the 
council was graciously pleased, upon application made by the 
supplicant, to allow her sister [Lady Graden] to wait upon her 
husband in regard of his dangerous and sick condition, and ever 
since her coming from him, no person is suffered to visit or 
speak to him, save the keeper that takes in his necessaries, and 
therefore humbly supplicating, that, in consideration of the prem- 
ises, and of the supplicant's husband being so tender and unwell 
that he can not rise from bed, and of the coldness of the weather, 
and other things that attend sickness and weakness, the council, 
out of their clemency and tender compassion, would allow the 
supplicant's sister, or niece, to attend him, the supplicant herself 
being so tender that she can not." The lords of council having 
considered this petition at their meeting on the 6th of November, 
" allow Helen Johnston, Lady Graden, the petitioner's sister, 
to be made close prisoner with Jerviswood for waiting on hnn, 
he being very valetudinary, the keepers of the tolbooth being 
always answerable for their safe custody, and that the said lady 
shall not go out of the room where the said Jerviswood is close 
prisoner, without order from the council."* 

Lady Graden now continued without intermission to attend 
him till his death. And not only by her presence did she re- 
lieve the tedious hours of his confinement, but consoled him 
under his sufferings, by suggesting to his mind the promises and 
hopes of the gospel, and especially by reading to him from the 
Book of God its divine lessons of instruction and comfort, to 
which the dying martyr listened with that intensity of interest 
which the near prospect of death and eternitv so powerfully tends 
to inspire. Nor, though those days and nights that she watched 

* Register of Act8 of Privy Council. 

25 



LADY GRADEN. 309 

over him were in some respects days and nights of sadness, could 
she fail to be comforted and edified by the heavenly spirit which 
he displayed — in witnessing the patience and joy with which he 
bore his afflictions, in the certain hope of having them more than 
compensated by the eternal glories of a better world. 

Lady Graden accompanied Baillie from the prison to the bar 
on the day of his trial, which was on the 23d of December ; and, 
taking her place beside him, she watched over him during the 
whole of the trial, which lasted from eleven o'clock in the fore- 
noon till past midnight. " He was so unwell and weak," says 
Wodrow, " that w hen he was in the panel,* his sister-in-law, 
Lady Graden, behooved to be with him in the panel, and gave 
him some cordial now and then to support him."f To the length- 
ened proceedings she would listen with painful and melancholy 
interest. Sir George M'Kenzie's " most bloody and severe 
speech" to the jury, as Wodrow characterizes it, would, doubt- 
less, create in her mind more poignant sensations than anything 
else she heard on that day ; nor can we well describe her feelings 
when he cast it up to Baillie as a reproach — what he felt to be 
and what really was an honor to him — that he was the nephew 
and son-in-law of her venerated father, Lord Warriston. The 
lord advocate's speech being concluded, and Baillie having spoken 
a few words, his great weakness rendering him unable to say 
much, the jury, it being then so late, were ordered to bring in 
their verdict to-morrow by nine o'clock, and the court dismissed. 
Lady Graden accompanied him from the bar to the prison, where 
she still continued to watch over him and to minister to his 
comfort. 

But her assiduous and soothing attentions to him she had not 
now long to perform. On the following day, about ten o'clock, 
being brought from the prison to the bar of the justiciary court, 
he was sentenced to be hanged that day (Dec. 24) at the market 
cross of Edinburgh, between two and four o'clock in the after- 
noon, and his head to be cut off, and his body to be quartered : 
his head to be affixed upon the Nether Bow Port of Edinburgh ; 
one leg to be affixed on the tolbooth of Jedburgh (where the 
greatest part of his estate lay) ; and another leg to be affixed on 
the tolbooth of Lanark (near to which his house of Jerviswood 
lay) ; another member to be affixed on the tolbooth of Ayr ; and 
another on the tolbooth of Glasgow ; his name, fame, memory, 
and honors, to be extinct ; and his blood to be tainted, &c.J 

* That is, " in the dock," or as panel at the har. t Wodrow's Anal., vol. iii., p.78. 
t Wodrow's Analecta, vol. iii., pp. 76-80. Wodrow's History, vol. iv., p. 110. 



310 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

It is highly probable that on that day, as on the day of the 
trial, Lady Graden attended him to the court, and that, with 
panting breast and bitter agony of spirit, she heard the sentence 
of death pronounced upon him. She returned with him again to 
the prison, resolved to minister to his comfort, as far as in her 
power, to the last. The scene through which she had now to 
pass, as well as the scenes through which she had already 
passed, would have been too much for many female minds. 
Their fortitude would have abandoned them ; and, robbed of all 
power of acting, they would have resigned themselves to the 
dominion of uncontrollable anguish. It was different with Lady 
Graden. On this trying occasion she was greatly supported. 
Her friend had now only a few hours to live ; but it was solacing 
to her to witness his fortitude, resignation, and heavenly joy ; 
to know that, though feeble in body, he was not infirm of soul ; 
that no terror was upon it ; that there was no faltering of his in- 
ward strength, but that his trust was firm in God. It afforded 
her satisfaction, though a painful satisfaction, to listen to the last 
prayers, so full of fervent, devotion and of triumphant faith, that 
proceeded from his dying lips, and to hear him give expression 
to the heavenly rapture which filled his soul in prospect of eter- 
nity. " When he was brought into the prison [after receiving his 
sentence], he fell over into the bed, where he broke forth into a 
most wonderful prayer. He seemed to be in a rapture. There 
seemed to be a shining majesty in his face ; the tears abundantly 
trickling down from his eyes. He spoke like one in heaven ; 
he showed what great and wonderful joy would be at the meeting 
of the saints with the Lord, and with one another. He said God 
had begun the good work in him ; he had carried it on, and now 
he was putting the copestone upon it, and now he had received 
a wonderful cordial : that within a few hours he would be inex- 
pressibly, beyond conception, well He said in his 

prayer that he was to be made a sacrifice ; he prayed it might be 
an acceptable sacrifice to God, and that his death might put a 
merciful stop to their cruel shedding of the blood of his people."* 
To such utterances as these, she could not listen without being 
convinced that God was present with him of a truth ; that the 
Divine strength was made perfect in his weakness, and that He, 
who now so mercifully sustained him, would continue to sustain 
him to the end. 

The time appointed for Baillie's execution soon arrived. Owing 
to his sickness, he was carried in a chair to the scaffold. On 
* Wodrow's Analecta, vol. iii., pp. 78-80. 



LADY GRADEN. 311 

coming out of the chair, he was so Aveak as to be unable, without 
assistance, to go up the ladder. He wore his night-gown. Lady 
Graden accompanied him from the prison to the scaffold. On 
their way to it, they passed the house of her father ; and, in pas- 
sing it, Baillie looked up to the chamber where Lord Warriston 
usually sat, and a multitude of associations connected with the 
past vividly rushing into his mind, he said to her, " Many a sweet 
day and night with God had your now glorified father in that 
chamber." " Yes," she replied ; and, thinking of his cruel death, 
she added, " Now he is beyond the reach of all suffering, equally 
free from sin and sorrow ; and the same grace which supported 
him is able to support you." She went up with him to the scaf-' 
fold, and stood by him while he attempted to address the crowd 
of spectators ; which he no sooner began to do — " My faint zeal 
for the protestant religion has brought me to this end" — than he 
was interrupted by the beating of the drums ; after which he made 
no farther attempt to speak. Previous to his engaging in prayer 
and being thrown over, she took her last farewell of him, which 
struck to the inmost feelings of her soul as with the hand of 
death. The last adieu of a dying friend, even when he dies 
upon his bed, though gratifying, is always painful — agonizing to 
the survivors. But when his death is tragical and outwardly 
ignominious, the final parting is still more overwhelming to the 
feelings. After Baillie had been thrown over, Lady Graden had 
still another duty to perform to him. She knew that the very 
dust of God's saints is precious in his sight ; that their bodies, 
though they may become the victims of man's implacable rage, 
continue to be the objects of his incessant care, and in the faith 
of this, and in imitation of God, she exercised an anxious care 
over the body of her friend, after the emancipated spirit had 
ascended from it to the throne of God, to receive the crown of 
immortal life. " With a more than masculine courage," as Foun- 
tainhall justly observes, she continued on the scaffold not only 
till Baillie was executed, but till she saw the hangman quarter 
his body. She also went with the hangman to see the pieces 
oiled and tarred, and she took them and wrapped each up in a 
linen cloth ; after which they were thrown into the thieves' hole, 
before being dispersed to the respective places where they were 
to be exhibited as a public spectacle.* 

The affliction of Lady Jerviswood, who, while all this was 
going on, was confined to her chamber, was great ; nor did the 

* Fountainhall's Historical Notices, vol. ii., p. 595. Wodrow's Analecta, vol. iii., 
pp. 78-80. 



312 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

government show much sympathy for her lacerated feelings. 
The night after her husband was hanged and quartered, they 
placed a guard of soldiers at her door ; so lhat a gentleman, who 
had received from him a paper for her, could hardly get access 
to deliver it to her. Their object in placing the soldiers at her 
door, was to get from her his dying speech, with the matter of 
which they were extremely offended, and the circulation of which 
they were very anxious to suppress. She gave them a copy of 
the speech, upon which the soldiers were removed. The idea 
of his members being dispersed through the country, and exhib- 
ited to public view, was peculiarly distressing to her feelings, 
i and she petitioned the privy council to permit them to be buried. 
The council was too heartless to grant her request from senti- 
ments of humanity ; but not altogether insensible to public odium, 
they would willingly have given her his members for interment 
could she have called in and suppressed all the copies of his 
speech, which was so much calculated to create, in the public 
mind, sympathy for the martyr, and indignation against the bloody 
men who murdered him. This, however, she very probably 
could not do, several copies of it having been written out and 
circulated, and, accordingly, her petition was rejected. The 
king was also petitioned to the same effect; but, little suscepti- 
ble of humane emotions, and too much engrossed with his vicious 
pleasures to lend a favorable ear to a widow's plaint, he also re- 
fused to grant her desire. 

" I am a kine, 
And wherefore should the clamorous voice of wo 
Iutrude upon mine ears." 

Little did he know, alas ! that before six weeks elapsed, he 
would be smitten by the relentless hand of death in the midst of 
his debaucheries, and summoned to give in his account before the 
Judge of all. The mutilated members of the martyr lay in the 
thieves' hole about twenty days, till the rats were like to fall 
upon them ; after which they were sent to the several places on 
the tolbooths of which they were to be fixed, according to the 
sentence, and there, it would seem, they continued till the revo- 
lution, when, it is probable, the conscience-stricken persecutors, 
dreading retaliation from the persecuted presbyterians, upon the 
introduction of a new order of things, took them down, as they 
took down the heads, arms and legs of other martyrs, which, 
with equal barbarity, they had exposed upon the gates of the 
capital, and on the tolbooths of the principal towns.* 

* FountainbaU's Historical Notices, vol. ii., p. 595. Wodrow's Analecta, voL 
iii., pp. 78-80. 



MRS. CAMPBELL. 313 

Of Lacty Graden we meet with no additional notices during 
the persecution. She, however, lived to see the Stuarts expelled 
from the British throne, and to rejoice in the deliverance which 
was effected by the prince of Orange. She also saw the de- 
scendants of Baillie raised to situations of high honor and trust 
under the new government, and, what was still better, adorning 
their high stations by the Christian virtues which distinguished 
their martyred father, and proving public blessings to their coun- 
try in their day and generation. She died in Edinburgh, pre- 
vious to the 11th of September, 1707.* 



LILIAS DUNBAR, 

MRS. CAMPBELL. 



During the persecution, the adherents of presbytery, though 
most, numerous in the south and west of Scotland, were scattered 
more or less numerously over the northern counties. Even so far 
north as Morayshire, and in some of the neighboring shires, not a 
few of them were to be found. The gospel had been preached in 
these remote parts with considerable success, by Mr. Robert Bruce, 
Mr. David Dickson, and other ministers who had been banished 
thither by James VI., or by the high commission court, for their 
opposition to the introduction of prelacy, and the fruits of the 
instructions of these eminent men remained even to the perse- 
cuting times. The labors of several very worthy ministers, who 
were settled in these localities previous to the Restoration, but 
who, shortly after that era, were ejected from their charges, had 
also been accompanied, during their incumbency, with no small 
measure of success ; and some of them, as Mr. Thomas Hog, 
Mr. John M'Gilligen, and Mr. Thomas Ross, continued to preach 
publicly after their ejection, with evident tokens of the Divine 
blessing. Many who had profited under their pastoral care, and 
who sympathized with them and the cause in which they suffer- 
ed, no doubt went to the parish churches to hear the curates ; 
but while they did so, they were secretly hostile to prelacy, and 

* " The testament dative and inventory of the debts and sums of money pertain- 
ing and addebted to umquhill Helen Johnston, relict of the deceased Mr. George 
Home of Graden, the time of her decease, who deceased within the city of Edin- 
burgh," is registered 11th September, 1707.— Commissary Records of Edinburgh. 
27 



314 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

a considerable number desisted altogether from waiting on the 
ministry of the conforming clergy. Nor was it the poor, and 
more illiterate, but the more wealthy and the best educated of 
the population, several of them proprietors of the soil, who 
favored the presbyterian cause. So strong a conviction had the 
government been led to form of the presbyterian leanings of the 
people in Morayshire, as to suspect that a considerable portion 
of them had actually joined with the covenanters at Bothwell 
bridge, or supported them with money, horses, arms, or provis- 
ions, although, after the strictest inquiry made by the commis- 
sioners of the privy council, who met at Elgin in the beginning 
of the year 1685, no evidence of this was brought out. The 
government had also been led to believe that some of the leading 
men among them had, from favor to the covenanters, employed 
a stratagem to prevent the heritors and militia from going out to 
assist the king's forces in putting down the insurrection at Both- 
well bridge, at the very lime when they were convening for that 
purpose. A fiery cross had been carried through the shire of 
Moray, avowedly to raise the inhabitants to defend themselves 
against the M'Donalds, who, it was given out, were about to in- 
vade them ; but the friends of the government alleged that this 
was a mere pretext, maintaining that the M'Donalds were at a 
distance, and had no such hostile intention, and that the real ob- 
ject of the mission of the fiery cross was to keep the heritors 
and militia from going out to join the king's host, by creating an 
apprehension that their presence was necessary at home for tho 
protection of their own bounds.* So favorably inclined were 
some of the most respectable and wealthy in that part of the 
country to the presbyterian interest, and so desirous were they 
of enjoying the pastoral instruction and superintendence of minis- 
ters of that persuasion, that they came to the resolution of using 
means for obtaining from the government the extension of the 
indulgence which had been granted in the south, to Morayshire, 
and appointed two of their number, Sir Hugh Campbell, of Cal- 
der, and Thomas Dunbar, of Grange, to go to Edinburgh upon 
this matter, authorizing them to act therein according to their own 
discretion. Finding, on their arrival at Edinburgh, that there 
was no prospect of their proposal being favorably listened to by 
the government, there being then every appearance that the in- 
dulgence granted in the south would be withdrawn, these two 
commissioners did net move in the business at all.f 

Among the secret or avowed friends of the persecuted cause 
* See Appendix, No. VIII. t See Appendix, No. IX. 



MRS. CAMPBELL. 315 

of nonconformity in Morayshire and the neighboring shires, 
were several ladies of respectable rank and of distinguished 
piety; among whom maybe enumerated the lady of Sir Hugh 
Campbell, of Calder, Lady Duffus, Lady Kilravock, Lady Muir- 
town, Lady Innes, and others. The lady of whom we now pro- 
pose to give some account, though respectably connected, was of 
humbler rank than the ladies now mentioned. But she was in 
some respects superior to any of them, not, it may be, on the 
score of piety, yet in regard to her enlightened and resolute ad- 
herence to presbyterian principles. She has left behind her a 
diary,* which, though consisting chiefly of a record of her reli- 
gious exercise and experience, is very interesting and instruct- 
ive. It breathes throughout a spirit of ardent piety. It displays 
an extensive acquaintance with the Scriptures, and is remarka- 
ble for the judiciousness of the sentiment, untinctured by extrav- 
agance or enthusiasm, as well as for the elegant simplicity of 
the style, the age in which it was written being considered ; 
from which it is evident that she was a woman of superior mind, 
and that her piety was as enlightened as it was ardent. 

Lilias Dunbar was the only daughter of Mr. Dunbar, 

of Boggs, by his wife, Christian Campbell, daughter to Sir John 
Campbell, fifth knight of Calder. She was born about the year 
1657. When very young, she had the misfortune to be deprived 
of both her parents by death ; after which she was for some time 
brought up by her cousin, Sir Hugh Campbell, who succeeded 

* This diary was printed for the first time in " The Religions Monitor and Evan- 
gelienl Repository" (or 1832, an American periodical publication. It is preceded by 
a short biographical notice of the authoress written by the Rev. James Calder, min- 
ister of Croy, her grandson. Of this diary, ample use is made in the present me- 
moir; and my best acknowledgments are due to the Rev. Thomas Gnodw illie, 
Barnet, State of Vermont, United States of America, who kindly transmitted to me 
a copy of the several numbers of the periodical in which it is contained. 1 am also 
under obligations to the Rev John Russell, Stamford, Canada West, to whom the 
MS from which the diary was printed, belongs, for some interesting notices of the 
descendants of one of Mrs. Campbell's daughters, which the reader will find in the 
close of -f his sketch. Mr Russell inherited this MS. from his mother in-law, the 
wife of the Rev. Henry Clark, of Bophole, and grent-granddaughter of Mrs Camp- 
bell, and though not the original, it is a transcript eiiher fn m it or from a correct 
copy •' The Rev. James Calder," says he, " informs us in his preface that he had 
the diary transcribed, under his own eye. from the original. My mother-in-law, 
Mrs. Clark, of Boghole, borrowed either ihe original, or, more probably that copy, 
from her uncle, and transcribed the whole of it in a very plain, good hand. Tin's 
copy is now in our possession Some years ago, through urgent importunity, we 

permitted it to be taken to the Rev Alexander Gordon, late of New York, 

thatitmight.be publifhed in 'The Religious Monitor.' and, when in type, a few- 
extra copies were struck off for gratuitous distribution among acquaintances in 
America friendly to the reformation in Scotland." 



316 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

ner grandfather, as the nearest male heir of the family of Calder. 
She was next taken into the family of her cousin-german, the 
pious Lady Duffus, who acted toward her the part not merely of 
a kind friend, but of an indulgent mother, for twelve years ; and 
for whom she felt all the tenderness of an affectionate daughter. 

Though favored with a religious education, she did not feel 
even common serious impressions till she had nearly reached 
the seventeenth year of her age, when she became dangerously 
ill of the small-pox,* in the family of Lord Duffus, at Elgin. 
She acknowledges that before this she had no religion, though 
education and good company had sufficient influence on her con- 
science to keep her from hating and reproaching the godly, and 
though she was kept from gross outward sins. Under this sick- 
ness, her conscience being awakened, she vowed that should 
God in his providence recover her, she would strive to be his 
servant; and having, notwithstanding her previous thoughtless- 
ness about religion, been convinced that the nonconforming min- 
isters far surpassed the conforming in spirituality of character, 
as well as in their success in turning sinners to God, and in build- 
ing up saints, she also resolved to embrace such opportunities as 
offered, of hearing them preach. This, and not that intelligent, 
acquaintance with the important principles for Avhich they were 
suffering, which she afterward attained, was the reason why she 
purposed to attend their ministry. " At that time," says she, " I 
did not truly perceive how much it was my duty to take heed 
whom I heard, and to consider them who were my ministers, 
and to follow their faith, looking to the end of their conversation, 
and to mark them that make divisions, and turn aside for reward. 
Neither did I understand that there was so much of popery and 
w ill-worship in episcopacy as truly there is. Neither did I 
know that the presbyterians' laying down of life and liberty was 
for such a weighty matter as owning Jesus Christ in his kingly 
office. The end for which I intended to hear presbyterian min- 
isters preach was, because I heard and saw that the Lord had 
blessed their labors to many, and souls were getting good by 
them." 

On her recovery from this sickness, she went again to Calder, 
whence she had come to Elgin ; and there being at that time in 
Calder several godly ministers, Mr. Thomas Ross, Mr. Thomas 
Hog, and Mr. James Urquhart, she had an opportunity of attend- 
ing their ministry, which she highly prized. Still she confesses 
that " the getting of Christ and a new heart was not her first de- 
* This was in the year 1674. 



MRS. CAMPBELL. 317 

sire, but to get something in herself to answer God's goodness 
with, and to get and embrace the means of salvation ;" that she 
" wanted Christ and a new heart days and years after this, even 
until she saw herself miserable without Christ, and glad to sell 
all in her and without her to get that enriching pearl ;" and that 
though she aimed at serving the Lord and seeking a righteous- 
ness, she sought it long in herself before she attained to that 
which cometh by faith in Jesus Christ. 

The first two sabbaths after her coming to Calder, she went to 
the Old Town of Kilraick, where Mr. Thomas Ross then dwelt, 
and heard him preach. Under the sermons of this holy man, 
she felt her affections grow warm with zeal for God, and love 
to Mr. Ross's hearers, and her heart, inspired with a greater fear 
of committing sin than she had formerly experienced. But 
though more delighted with sitting under his ministry than ever 
she had been with hearing any of the prelatic persuasion, yet 
from the fear of giving offence to several persons whom she 
loved, she went next sabbath to hear Mr. Donald M'Pherson, 
the incumbent of the parish of Calder. " I got no good," says 
she, " there, but rather evil. What I heard had no impression 
on my affections or memory. It was a dead sound to me. Nei- 
ther did I discern so much as reverence to God among the peo- 
ple I saw there. I was even ensnared by the carnal carriage and 
discourse of that congregation." From this she found that the 
word of God proved profitable to the hearers only when preached 
by those who walk uprightly ; and that when it is otherwise, God's 
holy name is profaned by the speaker, and the Word preached 
tends to harden the hearts of the hearers. Having derived no 
benefit from hearing Mr. M'Pherson preach on the sabbath re- 
ferred to, nor during the three years in which, previous to this, 
she had attended his ministry, while the hearing of Mr. Thomas 
Ross begat in her a desire after God, she resolved to wait on the 
pure preaching of the Word, so long as such an opportunity was 
within her reach ; and from that time she continued to hear Mr. 
Ross, under whose pulpit instructions she profited " in head- 
knowledge, in formality of duties, and in outward zeal." Half a 
year after this she went to Elgin, to visit Lady Duffus, and, con- 
trary to her intention, was kept there over sabbath. On Satur- 
day, it was distressing to her to think of going on the morrow to 
hear the bishop,* for having been his hearer half a year before, 
she knew the unedifying and fruitless character of his sermons. 
But there being no motive inducing her to go, except the fear of 
* Mr. Murdoch M'Kenzie. 
27* 



318 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

man, and persuaded that it is better to offend man than God, she 
stayed at home on the sabbath, for which she met with censure 
and reproach. " From this," says she, " I observed, 1st, that a 
natural conscience will move men to their duty, although they 
should suffer for doing the same, and yet be void of true love to 
God ; and, 2d, that it is good to walk according to one's light, 
both in his judgment and outward performance, although he have 
not yet attained to be right in the more weighty matter in the 
heart. It was love I had to my own soul that made me stay 
from that polluted ordinance, rather than to witness for God, in 
my station, against the evil of the times." 

After staying one sabbath at Elgin, she returned to Calder, in- 
tending next spring to remove to Elgin and stay with Lady Duf- 
fus. There being at that time no presbyterian ministers at El- 
gin, she was not a little perplexed as to whether she should 
attend the ministry of the bishop. The temptation suggested 
itself to her mind, that many better than herself went to hear the 
prelatic ministers, and that her noncompliance might be adverse, 
to her worldly interest, by giving offence to Lady Duffus, and 
the other members of the family. Influenced by such motives, 
she resolved, though without expressing her intention to any 
one, to go with the crowd to hear the prelates and their curates 
on the sabbath, when deprived of an opportunity of hearing the 
presbyterian ministers. Becoming, however, soon after, con- 
vinced that it was sinful for her, from the fear of reproach, or of 
injuring her temporal interests, to take the example of a few per- 
sons for her rule, and acting upon this conviction, she entirely 
left off hearing the prelatic incumbents. 

In 1677, she suffered a heavy affliction in the loss of Lady 
Duffus, who died on the lGth of April that year. About a fort- 
night after the death of this kind benefactor, she gave up the 
charge she had in the family, and came out in the evening with- 
out a creature to comfort her, and without knowing where her 
next residence would be. Under this bereavement, she sought 
consolation in religion, and it was her own belief that the date of 
her first becoming a genuine believer in Christ was about a fort- 
night after that event. This appears from the following entry in 
her diary : — 

"Elgin, May 1, 1677. 

" The Lord, who is the Almighty, by his power, made my soul 
to close with the Lord Jesus, wholly on the terms that the gospel 
holdeth forth; and the Lord himseif gave me faith to believe in 
Jesus Christ, that he was my Savior, which I could never attain 



MRS. CAMPBELL. 319 

before that time on good grounds. On that blessed morning to 
me, I got the Rock of ages to be my support, and I got Christ 
Jesus to be to me the end of the law for righteousness, to com- 
fort me inwardly, under my disconsolate condition outwardly ; 
for it was but fifteen days after the death of my Lady Duffus, who 
was in place of my parents and all my relations to me. Now I 
can not pass by without observing the wisdom and goodness of 
God to me, in choosing that day and time for my deliverance out 
of the hands of all mine enemies, that I might serve him without 
fear. It was the time wherein I was most desolate. I was de- 
prived of my parents by death, and had not the expectation of 
other means to supply my wants. It was then I was deprived 
of the only person in the world who took care of me, when it 
pleased the wise Lord by death to put a separation betwixt my 
Lady Duffus and me, who died April 16, 1677. Then it was 
that the gracious God, who delights in showing mercy, did en- 
large my heart, and made me to take hold of him who is the 
pearl of great price, in whom all fullness dwells." 

In another place, after speaking of her great affection to Lady 
Duffus, and the loss she sustained by her death, she says : " Truly 
I think nothing less than deliverance out of soul-troubles, and 
the love of Christ, could make me overcome the loss of her who 
was my all in the world ; my pleasure, honor, and riches, were 
all in her : but how soon was all this laid in the dust to me ! Yet 
praises for ever be to Him who did it, so that we both were gain- 
ers. She hath passed from the valley of misery, and, as she 
herself said at her death, hath gotten the palm-tree in her hand, 
and now she walks with the Lamb in white. As for my part, for 
brass I have gotten gold, for a fading flower I have gotten the 
Noble Plant of Renown, who is the brightness of the Father's 
glory, and the express image of his person ; him who was dead 
and is alive, and lives for evermore ; him from whom death shall 
not be able to separate me, for he shall be with me when I go 
through the dark valley, so that I shall fear no evil. He shall 
present me spotless to the Father, in that place where there is 
no sin, no sorrow, no sickness, no death ; where I shall behold 
his face with joy, and where there are durable riches and ever- 
lasting pleasures." 

In those days of primitive simplicity and great religious fervor, 
it was more customary than in our day for Christians, in order to 
have their religious experiences tested, to communicate them to 
godly ministers, who were supposed to be skilled in distinguish- 
ing the genuine work of God's Spirit from counterfeit or spurious 



320 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

marks of grace. Of this, besides other instances which occur in 
the diary of the subject of this sketch, we meet with an example 
in the account which she gives of a visit she made, in 1677, to 
Mr. Thomas Ross, who was then a prisoner in Tain. " One 
part of my errand," says she, " was to inform him of my condi- 
tion, and to be tried by him, that, if I was right, I might be the 
more confirmed, and that my good Lord might get praise for his 
goodness, and for his wonderful works to me." 

She was accompanied by an intimate friend, a young woman 
named Jean Taylor, who also had a desire to see Mr. Ross, who 
had previously been the instrument of good to her soul. On com- 
ing to Tain, they found the good man sickly, yet he spent the 
time with them in very edifying discourse, and in explaining to 
them several passages of scripture, about which they desired to 
be informed. " We found much of the presence of God in his 
company," says she, " and our hearts opened to one another to 
tell of the goodness of God to our souls. Being with him alone 
next morning, I told him all the particular steps I could remem- 
ber of my soul-exercises, since I was taken from being his hearer 
in the Old Town of Kilraick, which Avas two years before that 
time. When I told him of my soul-trouble, and began to tell him 
of my deliverance, and the loving-kindness of the Lord to me — ■ 
how my will was broken, and faith wrought, and Christ Jesus 
manifested to me — our souls were filled with the joy of the Lord. 
Mr. Ross wept for joy, and I was so filled with a sense and feel- 
ing of the wonderful power of God, and his love to my soul in 
Jesus Christ, that I was put to silence for a while, and could not 
get expressions to vent the ocean of his love." 

She returned from Tain to Moiness, where she stayed some 
weeks with Mrs. Donald Campbell, whose kindness to her she 
gratefully records, aud to whom she had freedom in communica- 
ting her Christian experience, that lady " being one," as she ob- 
serves, " that had tasted that the Lord was gracious." Shortly 
after, she went to service to Lady Innes Younger, who was resi- 
ding at Dipple. All these changes strongly affected her mind. 
Writing in July, 1677, she says : " Lady Innes Younger sent for 
me to Moiness, to go home to her service to Dipple ; upon which 
I had deep impressions on my spirit of being desolate — an or- 
phan, having neither father nor mother, and those who supplied 
their room to me were taken from me. First, my aunt, lady to 
the master of Forbes, and soon after, my Lady Duffus, her daugh- 
ter, who was indeed a mother to me for twelve years. My love 
to her did exceed its due bounds ; my expectations from her, and 



MRS. CAMPBELL. 321 

my fears of being deprived of her, were both great." In the fam- 
ily of Lady Innes she was, however, very comfortable. Of that 
lady she speaks in the highest terms. " She whom I was serv- 
ing was a real seeker of God, and zealous for the truth ; a wise, 
reserved woman, easy to be served ; of a pleasant, natural tem- 
per. I never got an angry word from her. Her regret would 
be that I was not so well with her as she would desire ; and my 
complaint was, that my service done her was so small." 

During the time of her residence in that, family, she enjoyed 
much spiritual comfort. " I stayed a year with her, which was 
a blessed time to my soul, such as I have not had the like." — 
" That was the year wherein I was taken up to Mount Pisgah, 
and made to view the promised land, and did eat of the grapes 
of Eshcol, even the first-fruits of that land that is the glory of all 
lands."—" The first month I was at Dipple .... I was made to 
read my own name in the book of Election, by finding the Spirit 
of God in his Word bearing witness with my spirit that I was 
his. I was made to consider what my case was the year before ; 
how the threatenings of the Word of God were a terror to me, 
because I found myself guilty ; the avenger of blood pursuing, 
and I without the city of refuge. I found my conscience con- 
demning me, so that I bore the sentence of death in my breast. 
I was encompassed about with fears in my greatest prosperity. 
Then I was made to wonder and rejoice at the blessed change I 
felt wrought in my soul — faith where there was unbelief, light 
where there was darkness, hope where there was fear : I was 
made to find the enmity that was in me taken away, and God in 
Christ become my friend." 

In the summer of the year 1679, in the twenty-second year of 
her age, she was married to Mr. Alexander Campbell of Torrich, 
a young gentleman descended, like herself, from the family of 
Calder, and a cousin of her own. In the prospect of entering 
into this new relation, her unwillingness to have the service per- 
formed by any of the prelatic clergy occasioned her no small 
perplexity, it being a crime, as the law then stood, to employ for 
that purpose the nonconforming ministers. " This matter," says 
she, " which gave me much trouble before, and was likely to 
give more, was then so presented to my view that it was a sharp 
trial to my faith." The union was, however, formed by Mr. John 
Stewart, who, at the restoration, was minister of a parish in the 
presbytery of Deer, in the synod of Aberdeen, but who was eject- 
ed for nonconformity. This we learn from the examination of 
Mr. Stewart before the committee of the privy council, which met 



322 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

at Elgin on the 2d of February, 1685 ; when he " deponed that he 
married Alexander Campbell, in Calder's-land, with Lilias Dunbar, 
who had been the Lady Innes's servant long before the indemnity." 
This new relation proved to her the source of much domestic 
happiness. In Mr. Campbell, who was a man of genuine piety, 
as well as an intelligent and warm friend of the presbyterian in- 
terest, she found a husband whose character, tastes, and habits, 
were congenial to her own ; and she records, twelve years after 
this, that his "tender affection and care of her, in all her bodily 
distresses, was one of the greatest mercies bestowed on her." 

The persecution which raged in the south of Scotland, also 
embraced Morayshire. The nonconforming ministers there, like 
those in the south, were ejected from their charges ; and some 
of them, as Mr. Thomas Hog, Mr. John M'Gilligen, and Mr. 
Thomas Ross, were imprisoned both in the North and in the 
Bass. Several of the laity, too, were fined and imprisoned by 
the sheriff of the shire. It was not, however, till the year 1685, 
that Mrs. Campbell was subjected to trouble on account of her 
presbyterian principles. To put the laws against nonconformity 
into execution, the government had adopted the method of send- 
ing commissioners invested with ample powers to different parts 
of the country, to hold courts for trying such as were guilty of 
church disorders ; and about the close of the year 1684, it w;ss 
resolved to adopt vigorous measures against the presbyterians in 
the north. On the 30th of December that year, the privy coun- 
cil in obedience to a letter received from his majesty, appointed 
and commissioned the earl of Errol, the earl of Kintore, and Sir 
George Munro, to proceed to Morayshire, " to meet and hold 
courts, and in these courts to call and convene all parties guilty 
of conventicles, withdrawing from the public ordinances, disor- 
derly baptisms or marriages, and such like disorders and irregu- 
larities ; and to take their oath or examine witnesses against 
them, as they shall see cause, pronounce sentences and cause 
the same to put to due execution, by imprisonment or other legal 
diligence, either as to witnesses not compearing, or compearing 
refusing to depone, or as to parties also refusing to depone when 
the verity of the libel is remitted to their oath, conform to the 
laws of this realm.' The bounds included in their commission 
were " betwixt Spey and Ness, including Strathspey and Aberne- 
thy," and their first meeting was to be at Elgin, January 22, 1685.* 

* Wairants of Privy Council. On llie 9th of January, 1685, their commission 
was extended to ihe s-hires of Inverness. Ross. Cromarty, and Sutherland, the coun- 
cil having heard that there were several persons guilty of the like delinquencies iu 



MRS. CAMPBELL. 323 

To facilitate the proceedings of these commissioners, the coun- 
cil, on the 8th of January, 1685, wrote a letter to the bishop of 
Moray, " recommending" him to advertise all his ministers within 
the bounds specified, to attend the commissioners on the above 
day, bringing with them their elders, and lists of persons guilty 
of church disorders, or suspected of disaffection to the present 
established government in church or state. And to afford all en- 
couragement and protection to the commissioners, the council, at 
the same meeting, wrote a letter to Lord Down, sheriff of Mo- 
ray, requiring and commanding him to convene all the heritors 
and freeholders in his shire and bounds foresaid, and his militia 
regiment, to attend the commissioners until the end of their com- 
mission, and to receive and obey such orders as should be given 
them by the commissioners from time to time. 

As a further means of facilitating the proceedings of the com- 
missioners, the council obtained a list of between two and three 
hundred nonconformists in Morayshire and the adjacent dis- 
tricts, made up, it is probable, by the assistance of the established 
clergy, who throughout the whole of Scotland were particularly 
zealous in furnishing the government with lists of persons who 
did not attend the pai'ish churches. And on the 10th of January, 
1685, the council ordered letters to be addressed to his majesty's 
messengers-at-arms, and also to the sheriff in that part of the 
country, commanding them to summon, according to the legal 
forms, the persons named and criminated in the letters, to appear 
personally before the lords-commissioners of the privy council 
and justiciary, to meet at Elgin, " to answer to the foresaid com- 
plaint, and to give their oaths of verity thereupon, or such arti- 
cles thereof as shall be by the said lords referred thereto, with 
certification to them, if they refuse to depone as aforesaid, the 
said lords are to hold them as confessed, and proceed to pro- 
nounce sentence against them for an arbitrary punishment as 
offers under the pain of rebellion and putting of them thereto 
simpliciter."* In the list of those against whom these letters 
were raised, were Mrs. Campbell, Mr. Campbell, and his mother ; 
and they were duly summoned. 

On the 30th of January, two messengers-at-arms proceeded to 
the market-cross of Nairn, the head of the shire in which Mrs. 
Campbell, and many of the others whose names appear in the 
letters, resided, and thereat, " after three several oyess," open 
proclamation, and public reading of the letters in time of public 
market, commanded and charged them in the name and by the 
* Warrants of Privy Council. 



324 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

authority of his majesty, to compear before the lords-commis- 
sioners of his majesty's council and justiciary at Elgin, upon the 
4th day of February next, to answer to the said complaint. 

The charges brought against Mrs. Campbell and the other in- 
dividuals against whom these letters were directed, will be best 
learned from the letters themselves.* They begin with affirm- 
ing, that " by the laws and customs of all well-governed nations, 
laws and practices of this kingdom, and many clear and express 
acts of parliament, the crimes of sedition, the enticing, persuad- 
ing, instigating, or encouraging, any persons to rebellion : the 
supplying and furnishing them with money or provisions for car- 
rying on thereof; the giving them any help or counsel thereanent ; 
the keeping of intelligence or correspondence with them ; the 
concealing, resetting, harboring, supplying, conversing, intercom- 
muning, or corresponding with, or doing favors to any traitors, 
rebels, fugitives, vagrant preachers, or intercommuned persons ; 
the giving meat, drink, house, harbor, or relief, comfort, or coun- 
sel to them ; the maintaining of the treasonable positions and 
principles of resisting, suspending, depriving, or deposing us 
from the exercise of our royal government, putting limitations on 
their due allegiance and obedience to us ; the malicious speak- 
ing, advising, and writing, preaching or expressing such treason- 
able intentions ; the attempting or endeavoring any manner of 
way the diversion or suspension of the right of succession to the 
imperial crown of this realm, or debarring the next lawful suc- 
cessor from the immediate actual and free administration of the 
government; the plotting and contriving against us and our gov- 
ernment ; the uttering of any slanderous or seditious speeches 
against us, our council, or proceedings ; the stirring up of our 
people to sedition, rebellion, or a dislike of our government ; the 
leasing-making to, of, or betwixt us and our people ; the conceal- 
ing and not revealing of treason, and the hearing of seditious and 
treasonable speeches and proposals of contributing and collecting 
money for forfaulted traitors, rebels, or fugitives, and not discov- 
ering and giving notice of the same, are in themselves crimes of 
a very high and dangerous nature and consequence, punishable 
with the pains of death, forfeiture of life, lands, and goods ; and 
by three several warrants, under our royal hand, our advocate is 
allowed and authorized to pursue the foresaid treasonable crimes, 
or any one or other of them, in order to an arbitrary punishment, 
before the lords of our privy council ; and to pursue the same to 

* Mr. Roderick M'Kenzie of Dalvenan, advocate-substitute for bis majesty's ad- 
vocate, is the prosecutor. 



MRS. CAMPBELL. 305 

the defenders' oaths of verity : and the refusing allegiance to us, 
the native sovereign; the owning, or refusing to disown, dis- 
claim, and renounce, the treasonable combination against us and 
our authority, called the solemn league and covenant, so oft con- 
demned by our laws and proclamations of our council, by which 
they put most undutiful and treasonable limitations upon the due 
allegiance, which they owe to us, are crimes of a high nature, 
and severely punishable ; and by the laws and acts of parliament 
of this kingdom, the withdrawing from their own parish kirks, 
being present at house or field conventicles, the baptizing and 
marrying irregularly, are declared to be seditious, and of danger- 
ous consequence ; and the not communicating once in the year, 
and not taking the oath of allegiance, the suffering of conventi- 
cles in their house or lands, are, by several acts of parliament 
and proclamations, severely punishable, with the pains and pen- 
alties therein expressed ; and the refusing to depone anent con- 
venticles, persons present there, and circumstances done therein, 
or resetting or intercommuning with rebels or fugitives, are pun- 
ishable with fining, close imprisonment, or banishment to the 
plantations." 

The letters next proceed to bring home the charges. " Nev- 
ertheless, it is of verity that Mr. James Park, Mr. John Stewart, 
Mr. George Meldrum of Crombie, Mr. Alexander Dunbar, Mr. 
James Urquhart, vagrant preachers ; Janet Watson, spouse to John 
Barber ; Elizabeth Weenies, Lady Brea ; Jean Campbell, good- 
wife of Torrich ; Ewin Campbell, lately in Calder parish ; Jean 
Thomson, his spouse ; Alexander Campbell, lately there ; Lilias 
Dunbar, his spouse ; Jean Taylor, sometime servant to the good- 
wife of Torrich ;* . . . being persons of seditious and pernicious 
principles, highly disaffected to us and our government, have 
most treasonably incited, persuaded, instigated, and encouraged 
several persons to go out. to the late rebellion at Bothwell-bridge, 
in June, 1679 years; did supply or promised to supply and fur- 
nish them with money, horse, arms, provisions, for carrying on 
thereof ; kept intelligence and correspondence with them ; gave 
them help or counsel thereanent ; did most treasonably conceal, 
harbor, supply, converse, intercommune, and correspond with, 
give meat, drink, house, harbor, relief, comfort, and counsel, and 
do favors to notor, open, and manifest traitors, rebels, fugitives, 
forfaulted and intercommuned persons, seditious and vagrant 
preachers, or such who were actually in the late rebellion, and 
had been indicted, challenged, or pursued therefor, or holden re- 
* There are between two and three hundred other names. 
28 



326 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

pute, and known to them to have been therein ; particularly to 
Archibald, late earl of Argyll, James Nimmo, Mr. Robert Martin, 
sometime clerk to the justice-court, John Hay of Park, Mr. Al- 
exander Fraser, Mr. Thomas Hog, Mr. John M'Gilligen, [Mr. 
James] Fraser of Brea, Mr. John Hepburn, Mr. William M'Kay, 
Mr. Alexander Dunbar, Mr. James Urquhart, Mr. James Park, 
Mr Thomas Ross, Mr. John Stewart, Mr. Duncan Forbes, Mr. 
William Ramsay, William Cranston, servant in Gutters, or one 
or other of the forfaulted or printed rebels and fugitives ; treated 
and consulted by word, writ, or message with them, and the per- 
sons above named, and others, in both England, Holland, and 
this kingdom, for carrying on the late horrid and execrable plot 
against our sacred person, the person of our royal brother, and 
our government and authority ; contributed, or promised to con- 
tribute, money and provisions for carrying on thereof; did hear, 
conceal, and not reveal treasonable proposals, discourses, contri- 
butions offered and sought thereanent, or for them, and against 
us and our government ; have and do maintain these treasonable 
positions, that it is lawful for subjects to enter into leagues and 
covenants, and to take up arms against us and our authority, to 
suspend, deprive, and depose us from the style, honor, and kingly 
name, of the imperial crown of this realm, and from the exercise 
of our royal government ; have and do put limitations upon their 
due obedience and allegiance to us ; have maliciously spoken, 
written, or otherwise expressed these their treasonable inten- 
tions ; have attempted and endeavored the suspension and the 
diversion of the right of succession, and debarring our lawful 
successor ; have plotted and contrived against us and our gov- 
ernment; have uttered slanderous and seditious speeches against 
us, our council, and proceedings ; have and do decline the judg- 
ment of us and our council ; have endeavored the innovation of 
our government ; have impugned or sought the diminution there- 
of ; have made and told leasings to, of, and betwixt us and our 
people ; have concealed and not revealed treason, seditious and 
treasonable speeches and proposals ; have withdrawn from, and 
not kept and joined in, the public ordinances and ordinary meet- 
ings of divine worship in these our parish churches ; have been 
present at house or field conventicles, where several seditious 
preachers did take upon them to preach, pray, and expone scrip- 
ture ; have married and baptized disorderly ; have not communi- 
cated once a year ; have or do refuse and delay to depone anent 
conventicles, persons present thereat, things done therein, and 
anent receipting and intercommuning with fugitives and rebels ; 



MRS. CAMPBELL. 327 

have and do refuse to take the oath of allegiance required, and 
offered to swear and renew the covenant, or refuse to disclaim, 
disown, or renounce the same ; have expressed words and sen- 
tences to stir up the people to a dislike of us, our prerogative and 
supremacy, and the government of church and state ; and the 
said ministers did pray, preach, and the persons above named 
did hear treasonable and seditious doctrine, and have suffered 
and heard conventicles in their houses and on their lands, whereby 
the said and the other persons above complained upon have di- 
rectly contravened the foresaid laws and acts of parliament ; have 
committed and are guilty of one or other of the crimes particu- 
larly above mentioned, and are art and part thereof, or accessory 
thereto." 

These are heavy accusations, but the most of them are wholly 
unfounded. The only points in which Mrs. Campbell, or indeed 
any of the nonconformists in the north, had violated the laws 
then existing, were their not attending the parish kirk, their be- 
ing present at house conventicles, and their hospitably entertain- 
ing the nonconforming ministers. But, like the persecutors of 
the primitive church, who covered the Christians with the skins 
of wild beasts, and then exposed them to be torn in pieces by the 
fury of dogs, the persecuting government of the Stuarts was in 
the practice of charging the presbyterians with crimes of which 
they were altogether innocent, with the view of making them 
odious, and of giving the color of justice to the cruelty with 
which they were treated. Such has been the policy of the per- 
secutor in every age. He has never avowedly persecuted the 
disciples of Jesus on the simple ground of their being the disci- 
ples of Jesus. He has first calumniously accused them of sedi- 
tion, rebellion, or other flagitious acts, which the magistrate is 
bound to punish, and then, under this pretext, has proceeded to 
wreak his vengeance upon them. 

After charging Mrs. Campbell and her associates with the 
crimes just now specified, the letters proceed as follows : " Which 
being verified and proven by their own oath, or otherwise, they 
ought to be punished with the pains above mentioned, and with 
such arbitrary punishments as the lords of our privy council 
shall think fit to decern and determine ; and if they shall refuse 
to depone upon the haill or any part of this libel, they ought to 
be holden as confessed thereupon, conform to the letters and war- 
rants direct under our royal hand for that effect ; and punished 
therefor with such arbitrary pains as the privy council, or their 
committee or commissioners, shall think fit, and the crimes de- 
serve, to the terror of others to commit the like hereafter." 



328 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

On hearing of the intended meeting of the commissioners of 
the privy council, a considerable number of the persons sum- 
moned to appear before them fled, among whom was Mrs. Camp- 
bell's husband. Having been intercommuned for hearing and 
countenancing the persecuted presbyterian ministers, he deemed 
it prudent to flee for his safety. He fled, first to Strathnaver, 
and afterward to Ireland. Mrs. Campbell remaining at home to 
wait upon her mother-in-law, Mrs. Jean Campbell, who was dan- 
gerously ill, was apprehended, and carried prisoner to Elgin. At 
the meeting of the commissioners of the privy council on the 3d 
of February, the roll of delinquents was called and their libel 
read, the tenor of which has already been laid before our read- 
ers. On the 5th, Mrs. Campbell was brought before them. The 
only part of the libel proved against her was, that she " had with- 
drawn from, and not kept and joined in, the public ordinances 
and ordinary meetings of divine worship in her own parish 
church." Mr. Donald M'Pherson, minister of the parish of Cal- 
der, in which she resided, gave in a list of disorderly persons in 
his parish, which consisted of only seven individuals, among 
whom are " Alexander Campbell, who," says he, " has removed, 
and Lilias Dunbar his wife, who for the most part remains in 
the said parish, but always stays from ordinances; Jean Camp- 
bell, goodwife of Torrich, who has been this long time bygone 
valetudinary ; and Jean Taylor, servant to the foresaid Jean 
Campbell, who has now removed from the foresaid parish, but 
during her abode always abstracted from ordinances." Mr. 
M'Pherson being solemnly sworn, deponed that the above was a 
correct list of all who were disorderly in his parish ; and that all 
of them, " except Jean Campbell, goodwife of Torrich, who is at 
the point of death," and Lilias Dunbar, who waited upon her, had 
fled, he knew not whither, on hearing that the committee of the 
privy council was to sit at Elgin. The elders of the parish of 
Calder, being solemnly sworn and interrogated, also " deponed 
that Jean Campbell, the goodwife of Torrich, and Lilias Dunbar, 
her good-daughter, spouse to Alexander Campbell of Torrich, 
who has fled, did and does withdraw."* 

Being brought before the commissioners, Mrs. Campbell was 
examined upon oath. To the question Avhether she attended her 
parish church, she answered in the negative ; and being further 
interrogated how long she had withdrawn from it, she replied, 
" For the last six years." To the question whether she had been 
present at conventicles, she answered in the affirmative. It be- 
* Warrants of Privy Council. 



MRS. CAMPBELL. 329 

ing then demanded Avhether she would engage to attend the par- 
ish church in future, she replied that she could not come under 
such an obligation. " Are you then willing," said the commis- 
sioners, " to find security to leave the kingdom, or engage to 
keep the church V To this she answered by expressing her 
readiness to leave her native land, rather than come under an 
engagement which appeared to her to be inconsistent with her 
duty to God, and to find such security as might be required. 
Her depositions, subscribed by her own hand, which are pre- 
served in the minutes of the proceedings of the commissioners, 
are as follows : — 

" February 5, 1685. 
" Lilias Dunbar, spouse to Alexander Campbell, sometime at 
Calder, [being] solemnly sworn, depones she has not kept the 
kirk these six years past, and has been at conventicles, and is 
not free to engage to keep the kirk in time coming ; and there- 
fore is content to find caution to depart this kingdom betwixt and 
the first of August next, she being now with child, or otherwise 
to keep the kirk, and not to return to the kingdom, unless she 
live regularly therein. " Lilias Dunbar." 

Under this examination, Mrs. Campbell displayed a dignity 
of bearing, and a superier intelligence, which struck the adver- 
saries with conviction, and the judges with admiration, one of 
whom spoke in her favor in the face of the court. Her uncom- 
promising fortitude also stands favorably contrasted with the 
timidity of the most of those brought before the commissioners 
on that day, and on the other days, who, with a few honorable 
exceptions, solemnly swore that they would keep the kirk in 
time coming. She was formally banished from the kingdom of 
Scotland by the following act of the commissioners of council- 
" Elgin, 11th February, 1685. The lords having considered the 
depositions of Lilias Dunbar, spouse to Alexander Campbell, 
sometime in Calder, with the libel against her, they, in respect 
she has been irregular and disorderly, and will not engage to 
keep the kirk, banish her forth of this kingdom, and ordain her 
to enact herself to go out thereof, under the pain of one thousand 
merks."* She immediately found the security required. Mr. 

* Warrants of Privy Council. Mrs. Campbell's friend, Jean Taylor, who was 
servant to Lady Muirtown at that time, was similarly treated. On bein;< examined 
by the commissioners, she declared that she had not kept the parish kirk, refused to 
engage to keep it in future, confessed that she had been at several conventicles, and 
had heard Mr. Alexander Dunbar preach at Lethin, and Mr. James Urquhart at his 
own house, but refused to depone upon oath. Accordingly,* the same 11th of 
28* 



330 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

John Campbell, of Langnidderry, her brother-in-law, who 
attended her during the proceedings against her at Elgin, readily 
became surety that she should depart out of Scotland within the 
time specified. 

It may be observed that the commissioners of council excused 
the absence of her mother-in-law, Mrs. Jean Campbell, upon a 
testimonial signed by Mr. M'Pherson, minister of Calder, and 
three of the elders of that parish, bearing that she was then con- 
fined to her bed, and in so low and weak a condition of body as 
to be unable to travel any distance from her own house without 
imminent hazard of her life. They also excused the absence of 
Mr. Campbell, who is said, in the minute of the court, to be 
" now in Ireland;" but the ground upon which he was excused 
is not stated. 

Similar sentences were passed upon several others who re- 
fused to engage to attend their parish churches in future ; and 
on the same 11th of February, the lords publicly required and 
commanded the sheriffs, bailies of regalities, and their deputies, 
magistrates of burghs, and other inferior judges, to put the laws 
vigorously in execution against church dissenters, and all irreg- 
ular and disorderly persons, from time to time ; and to imprison 
their persons till they sign and take the bond of peace and regu- 
larity, and oblige themselves to keep the kirk in time coming, or 
till the privy council give order concerning them, and especially 
against the delinquents now cited before them, in case they keep 
not the kirk hereafter, agreeably to their own engagements. 

The vigor with which the lord commissioners proceeded 
against the nonconformists in the north, gave great satisfaction 
to the established clergy in that quarter. On the same day on 
which sentence of banishment was pronounced upon Mrs. Camp- 
bell and several others, "the bishop and clergy of the diocese 
of Moray attended the lords in a body, and gave them their 
hearty thanks for the great pains and diligence they had used 
for the good and encouragement of the church and clergy in this 
place, and for reducing the people to order and regularity ; and 
begged the lords would allow them to represent their sense and 
gratitude thereof, to the lords of his majesty's most honorable 
privy council."'* 

It is to be regretted that that part of Mrs. Campbell's diary 

February, sentence of banishment from the kinsrdom was pronounced upon her, and 
it was also ordained that she should be detained prisoner till she should be transport- 
ed. But on petitioning the commissi iners she was set at liberty, upon her finding 
caution to depart the kingdom betwixt that time and the tirst of May following, un- 
der the pain of 500 merks. * WaiTauts of Privy Council. 



MRS. CAMPBELL. 331 

which relates to the story of her persecution, is lost.* We, 
however, meet with subsequent occasional allusions to it. She 
felt it to be a matter of thankfulness to God, in afterward looking 
back upon that period of her life, that she had been enabled to 
witness a good confession, at a time when many had yielded 
through fear ; and acknowledged that the afflictions which had 
befallen the church had, by the Divine blessing, been the means 
of promoting her spiritual improvement. On this subject she 
thus writes: "May 24, 1691, being the Lord's day. I cried 
unto the Lord that, if he would lengthen my days, he would 
make me [live] more for himself; that he would smell a savor 
of rest in my dwelling, and that there might be a savor of God 
where I should be. I mourned when I remembered how little 
of this had been. Then the Lord gave, me ease, in making me 
look back upon what special care he had of me (although some 
things had been denied me), in giving food and raiment to me 
and mine ; in helping me to keep the word of his patience ; and 
in keeping me in the hour of temptation. In the evening 1 was 
made to remember the Lord's great condescension to me, in 
gaining my froward will to submit to his holy will, as to my 
greatest troubles, and the sad dispensation which the church of 
God in this land had been trysted, in my time ; in letting me see 
a spiritual good and advantage in them, so that I have been 
ashamed of my own miscarriages. I was made to see that there 
was no God like to him who does all things well, and works out 
of contraries, giving meat out of the eater, and sweet out of the 
strong." 

Contrary to their expectations, Mrs. Campbell and her fellow- 
confessors, who had received sentence of banishment, were re- 
lieved from the necessity of leaving Scotland. Charles II. dying 
during the sitting of the commissioners, and his brother, James, 
duke of York, succeeding to the throne, the court quickly rose ; 
and though James was a bloody persecutor, exceeding in cruelty 
his deceased brother, yet he and his government were so actively 
employed in imprisoning, banishing, and executing the noncon- 
formists in the south, and in crushing the insurrection of the earl 
of Argyll, which took place soon after, that Mrs. Campbell and the 
presbyterians in the north were overlooked. Afterward, when 
James, with the view of paving the way for establishing in Britain 

* The Rev. John Russell, Stamford, Canada West, in the letter to the author, 
formerly referred to, says, "Mrs. Campbell's diary, before a transcript of it was 
taken, iiell into the hands of persons not friendly to the cause for which she suffered, 
who mutilated it by cutting out some leaves." 



332 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

the popish religion, of which he was a bigoted adherent, began to 
court the favor of dissenters, and to emit proclamations indemnify- 
ing them for all pains and penalties incurred for nonconformity, 
this, which afforded relief to many who were suffering in Scotland 
for conscience' sake, furnished another cause of her remaining 
unmolested. And lastly, the revolution of 1688, which, by the 
expulsion of James from the throne, and the accession of the 
illustrious William, prince of Orange, put an end to the persecu- 
tion, and established the liberties of the subjects upon a perma- 
nent basis, brought her troubles, and the troubles of Scotland, in 
this respect, to a termination. 

Mrs. Campbell's own experience of the tyranny of the Stuarts, 
and especially her sympathy with others who suffered more se- 
verely than herself for their constancy in the cause of Christ, 
made her hail the revolution as a wonderful deliverance vouch- 
safed by God to the church. On this subject, she has the fol- 
fowing entry in her diary: "June 14, 1691. — 1 set myself to 
be comforted in the favorable and wonderful steps of providence, 
which had come to pass in this land in behalf of the church of 
God within these three years past The provi- 
dence of God has been wonderful in these lands, since that time 
[King James VII.'s toleration], in the Lord's bringing a ravenous 
bird from the East ;* such he was to the enemies of his church, 
but a glorious deliverer to her friends ; a man to execute his 
council, from a foreign country, by breaking the sceptre of the 
ruler and the staff of the oppressor." But still she rejoiced in 
that event with trembling. The prevalence of sin around her, 
the small success of the gospel, and the little disposition winch 
existed to make a suitable improvement of this great deliverance, 
excited apprehensions in her mind that Providence might again 
frown upon Scotland. In the same part of her diary, she observes 
that, when thinking of that great deliverance, she " could not 
get comfort, but was in fear of a common calamity in the land, 
and a strait which Zion had to pass through. This," she adds, 
" was an old fear with me, and often renewed, that proceeded 
not from the dictates of my own mind, which is but weak, erring, 
and sinful, but from a deep impression which some places of 
scripture made on my spirit, when I was exercised in prayer — 
from abounding of sin, and the many evidences of God's displeas- 
ure ; so that I had much ground to fear, though not to prophesy. 
And never more ground to fear than since the yoke of persecution 
began to break four years ago, by King James's liberty of con- 

* William, prince of Orange. 



MRS. CAMPBELL. 333 

science, which was like an untimely birth, which tended to 
death rather than to life. Zion has been languishing in this land, 
and her king in a great measure absent as to his spiritual and 
powerful presence in his public ordinances, since that time." 

While highly esteeming all the nonconforming ministers in 
the north — of the most of whom she makes honorable mention 
in her diary, Mrs. Campbell regarded with peculiar veneration 
one of them — the celebrated Mr. Thomas Hog, of Kiltearn, both 
on account of his eminence as a minister of the gospel, and be- 
cause he, of all other ministers, had been most instrumental in 
promoting both her own and her husband's spiritual interests. 
His being forced by persecution to leave Morayshire occasioned 
her deep sorrow, and it was her earnest prayer that he might be 
restored to that part of the church. Her praj^er was answered, 
and his restoration to his old parish afforded her unfeigned joy. 
Writing, July 3, 1691, she says, " In the afternoon a friend came 
to me, who told me that Mr. Thomas Hog was come to Moray, 
and was at present at Muirtown. This was desirable news to 
me, which I had longed and prayed for ; he being one in whom 
there was much of the Lord to be seen, and who of all others, 
had done most good (by the blessing of God) to my husband's 
soul and to mine, and was, I may say, an interpreter one of a 
thousand. When I got an opportunity to retire, I looked up to 
the Lord to bless this man's coming, and entreated of the Lord 
to put a song of praise in my mouth. These words were brought 
to me, ' He strengthens the spoiled against the strong ; He turneth 
the shadow of death into the morning.' Then I saw the first 
part of this scripture largely made out in him ; so that it might 
afford matter of great praise and thankfulness, that the God of 
power had strengthened him even when spoiled of his lovely 
flock, and had now given him victory over the strong — even king 
and council — who imprisoned him thrice, and then banished him 
from his native kingdom for the gospel's sake ; and that now he 
was returned with honor (having kept the faith and a good con- 
science) to exercise his ministry in that parish where the Lord 
at first placed him, and where he blessed his labors. The dan- 
gers and troubles under which the Lord supported and relieved 
him, enlarged my heart in love and praise to God, who exercises 
wonderful, infinite wisdom, love, and power, toward his servants 
and people." 

On the 7th of July, Mrs. Campbell and her husband went to 
Muirtown to visit Mr. Hog, where she met Avith several pious 
intimate friends, whose society was very refreshing to her. The 



334 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

next day she had an opportunity of conversing with Mr. Hog, to 
whom she had not spoken for eight years before. As he was 
very infirm, and as several other persons were waiting to speak 
with him, there were only two particulars about which she was 
desirous of unburdening her mind to him at that time. In the first 
place, she wished to know his thoughts concerning her state ; 
and in the second place, she wished to tell him some of her 
secret spiritual troubles, with respect to which she could not 
attain to submission. As to the first, he seemed to be displeased 
with her for putting to him such a question, and refused to let 
her know what were his thoughts respecting her state. As to 
the other points, the little he said in answer was by way of re- 
proof, telling her that the want of submission proceeded from the 
pride and stubbornness of her spirit. Mr. Campbell having re- 
turned home in the afternoon, she stayed a few days in the fam- 
ily of Muirtown, in which there was much of the savor of God; 
and during that time she obtained relief from the spiritual troubles 
which pressed upon her spirit. On the morning of the day on 
which she left Muirtown for Torrich, which was the 1 1th of July, 
having had a private interview with Mr. Hog, she told him of 
the submissive state of mind to which, through the goodness of 
God toward her the two preceding days, she had attained in ref- 
erence to what troubled her, and expressed her fears that some 
sharp trial was awaiting her, for which this submissive temper 
was preparing her, and which would test its reality. But he 
disapproved of her giving place to such thoughts, charging her 
with authority, as well as in much love, to beware of anxious 
thoughts about to-morrow, and earnestly urged her to a confi- 
dent and consistent trusting in God, quoting the words of Job, 
"Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him." " Thus," says 
she, " did the blessed man press me to live the life of faith, and," 
she adds, l> took leave of me, embracing me as a father does his 
child." 

Over the death of this eminently holy man she was soon called 
to mourn. In her diary, that event is recorded, and the character 
of Hog drawn with much feeling. The passage is deserving of 
being quoted, both from the pleasing simplicity with which it is 
written, and because it contains the estimate, formed by an in- 
telligent contemporary, of a minister highly venerated in his day, 
and whom YVodrow calls " that great, and, I had almost said, 
apostolical servant of Christ, Mr. Thomas Hog."* " I heard," 
says she, " of Mr. Thomas Hog's being removed from time to 
* Wodrovv'a Correspondence, vol. i , p. 166. 



MRS. CAMPBELL. 335 

eternity.* It was [not] a surprise to me, though great matter of 
lamentation. My husband and I had been seeing him in August. 
We then saw that he was near the end of his journey, by his 
spirit being transported with the hopes of glory, and his bodily 
health and strength failed. He endured much trouble in his body 
two months before his death, which was dark and afflicting to 
me. -As I was enabled, my prayer was to God for him, in the 
day of his calamity, whose reproof had been a kindness to me, 
and his smiting an excellent oil that did not break my head. 
The tongue of the learned was given him, indeed, to speak a 
word in season to the weary. He had the heart of the wise, 
which taught his mouth, and added learning to his lips. He 
gave reproofs of instruction, which, by his Master's blessing, 
were the way of life. He walked so with God that his conversa- 
tion shone to the glory of his heavenly Father. He had a large 
measure of the spirit of God, by which he knew the deep things 
of God. And it was given him to know the mysteries of the 
kingdom of God. He had a divine experimental understanding 
of the Scriptures, of the work of conversion, and cases of con- 
science ; so that they whose ears heard him blessed him. He 
was a Caleb indeed, who followed the Lord fully in his ministry 
in prison, in banishment, in strange lands, and unto death. Even 
the haters of godliness were forced to own that God was in him 
of a truth, and that he kept his integrity. It is not my design to 
praise men, and, therefore, I will drop this subject, though it be 
a large field ; [and shall] only further observe, that I never knew 
one that came his length, and I wish I had ground to believe 
that I shall yet know them. I can not forget him who was the 
bridegroom's friend ; who, when I was lying in my blood, told 
me of my hazard, and where there was help for me ; and, with 
the authority of his Master, charged me not to delay, showing 
me that delays, in a matter of so great importance, came from the 
devil. He preached Christ and conversion to me in private confer- 
ence, which had blessed effects on me. When under the greatest 
trouble I ever felt with respect to the case of my soul, in March, 
1677, he being then a prisoner at Forres, I went to speak to him. 
I was like one dumb, and could not utter one word of my case 
to him ; yet he spake to me as if I had told him of it, and said, 
when I parted with him, ' Fear not, ye seek Jesus.' Which word 
begot some hopes in me, which did not altogether leave me, until 
I got the manifestation of Christ to my soul, which was within 
six weeks afterward. Yea, I do not remember any time I saw 
* Mr. Hog died on the 4th of January, 1692. 



336 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

him but I got good by him, and in the end more than in the be- 
ginning. I can not show at large what was the exercise of my 
spirit upon hearing of his death. When it was told me, I spoke" 
not a word, till I went to the Lord in secret and mourned before 
him. I was four days much troubled, but strove against exces- 
sive grief; and I have reason to bless my Rock, who gave me 
a composal frame of spirit, and made my soul to profit by the 
death of this blessed man. His removal made the earth desolate 
in my esteem, and raised my affections from things below to 
things above, where Christ and the spirits of just men made per- 
fect are. In my mourning I was made to bless the Lord, who 
had put an end to the sufferings of his faithful servant, and to 
submit to his will who had said, ' He that will be my servant, 
let him follow me ; and where I am, there shall my servant be.' 
I remembered, to my comfort, how this blessed man, the last 
day I saw him, kindly embraced me, and rejoicing in spirit, said 
to me, ' You and I shall be together with the Lord for ever.' 
That night, being the last night I was in his house, my sleep de- 
parted from me ; upon which I rose at three o'clock in the morn- 
ing, and had two hours of sweet communion with God in prayer. 
. . . After that time I did not see this blessed man's 
face any more. He being very sick that morning, and not tit 
for speaking, my husband and I left him. I then looked on what 
was given me that morning as given to prepare me for his death. 
The day before he died, my thoughts were taken up with him ; 
and these words in Job were brought to my mind in relation to 
him, ' that he should go to his grave in a full age, as a shock 
of corn cometh in, in his season ;' which was quickly fulfilled. 
Having served God in his generation, he went to his grave in 
peace, and pleasantly gave up the ghost. Though he endured 
much pain in his body before, yet at the hour of his death he 
had ease, and went out of the world praising and rejoicing." 

From the whole of Mrs. Campbell's diary, it is evident that 
she greatly delighted in secret prayer; and to find time for that 
duty, she was in the habit of rising very early, that the exercises 
of devotion might be no obstruction to her performing such house- 
hold duties as devolved upon her. " Some of her acquaintance 
expressed surprise that she who had time at her command, and 
was not obliged to labor, should so abridge her hours of sleep ; 
to which she replied, that she did not wish to give the enemies 
of religion occasion to say that she neglected her worldly mat- 
ters through attention to religious duties."* 

* Traditional information communicated by the Rev. John Russell, Stamford, Can- 
ada West. 



MRS. CAMPBELL. 337 

The concluding pare of her diary contains few facts respecting 
her subsequent history. It is chiefly occupied in describing her 
religious experience. Writing toward the latter part of her life, 
she complains that she had been " for several years seeking the 
Lord, and still tossed Avith fears that the foundation was not right;" 
and that " after several years, when the church was filled with 
presbyterian ministers, her darkness and deadness became more 
dreadful to her, so that ordinances were to her, for the most part, 
no small burden. When I spoke to ministers," she adds, " they 
all said my help was not to be found in them. Yet this was ob- 
servable, that such as were most zealous for the purity and the in- 
terests of Christ, were most comforting to my soul in public and 
private duties, but they could not cure my wound. Therefore I 
continued solitary for many days." During this period she was 
in a very weak state of health, and her bodily indisposition, com- 
bined with a melancholy temperament — for she informs us that 
" her natural temper inclined to melancholy" — no doubt contrib- 
uted greatly to produce those unhappy apprehensions with re- 
spect to her interest in Christ, which so greatly afflicted her. 
At last, however, she was relieved, by being enabled to take a 
more just and encouraging view of the gospel. " After continu- 
ing," says she, " a considerable time in this way, thus tossed with 
tempests, and not comforted, some words of scripture were brought 
to my mind, which were made use of for keeping me from utter- 
ly despairing and giving over, viz. : ' I came not to call the righ- 
teous, but sinners to repentance.' — ' Look unto me, all ye ends 
of the earth, and be ye saved.' — ' The whole need not a phys- 
ician, but they that are sick.' Thus, in my extremity, my spirit 
was in some measure supported. But afterward, when new dark- 
ness and fears filled my soul, I was no Avays able to draw com- 
fort from these words, unless they were conveyed with new 
power. On a certain night, after sad and affecting fears, which 
men or angels could not allay, these words came with power to 
my soul, ' Be careful for nothing ; but in everything by prayer and 
supplication, with thanksgiving, make your requests known unto 
God ; and the peace of God, Avhich passeth all understanding, 
shall keep your hearts and minds by Jesus Christ.' O ! how 
was my weary soul made to behold, in prayer, a wonderful beau- 
ty and glory in the deep contrivance of infinite free love, dis- 
played to guilty sinners in a Mediator, whose voice my soul was 
made to hear in these Avords." In this way she was at length 
delivered from these distressing fears. " I was particularly in- 
formed," says her grandson, Mr. James Calder, of Croy, " by the 
29 



338 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

abovenamed Mrs. Jean Taylor, who resided with her from the 
end of the persecution till her decease, that she attained to very 
great stability with respect to the state of her soul, and a glo- 
rious sunshine of spiritual comfort and joy in the Lord for some 
years before her death." And when the last enemy approached, 
she was not only calm and resigned, but expressed a holy exul- 
tation and triumph of soul. The dark valley of the shadow of 
death had lost all its terrors to her, and she descried beyond it 
the land of everlasting light, purity, and happiness. A little be- 
fore she expired, being in the full possession of her reason, and 
enjoying a celestial tranquillity of mind, " she called on her pious 
attending friends," to use again the words of Mr. Calder, " to 
sing with her once more on earth the praises of her best beloved ; 
in which exercise she joined with particular ardor, insomuch that 
the sweetness, the melody, and elevation of her voice were dis- 
tinguished by all who were present. Then having spoken a sen- 
tence or two, in the language of a triumphant faith, with eyes 
lifted up to heaven, and arms stretched out, this heaven-born soul 
quitted its cottage of clay with a smile, and sprang forward to 
meet her celestial Bridegroom, who was now come to receive 
her into the beatific embracements of his everlasting love."* 

Mrs. Campbell had twelve children. In her diary, she makes 
an allusion to her son John, who was born about September, 1692.f 
Another of her sons, Hugh, became a minister of the gos- 
pel 4 As to her other children, we are ignorant even of their 
names, except of one of her daughters, Jean, respecting whose 
descendants, as has been said before, we have been favored with 
some interesting facts, communicated by Mr. Russell, of Stam- 
ford, Canada West; who, after stating that Mrs. Campbell had 
twelve children, and that he can furnish no information respect- 
ing any of her other children, or their descendants, save her 
daughter Jean, named after her intimate and godly companion, 
Jean Taylor, adds, " Jean was married to a Mr. Calder, a minis- 
ter somewhere in the north. She and her husband died, leaving 
five young children. One of them, named James, was for many 
years minister of Croy, Nairnshire. Another of them, named 
Grisell, was married to Robert Falconer, merchant, Nairn ; and 
a third, named Lilias, and placed under the care of Jean Taylor 
after the death of her parents, died in her fifth year, old and ma- 
ture in Christian attainments. The other two, whose names I 
can not give, died unmarried ; but though they have left no name 

* The Religious Monitor, vol. ix., p. 131. 

t Ibid., vol. ix., pp. 342, 343. t Ibid., vol. ix., p. 131. 



MRS. CAMPBELL. 339 

on earth, they are said to have been such as to leave no doubt that 
their names are written in heaven. The Rev. James Calder, of 
Croy, Mrs. Campbell's grandson, was so esteemed in his day, 
that he was called the Hervey of the north. He had three sons, 
ministers of the church of Scotland. Hugh was his successor 
in Croy ; Charles* was minister in Urquhart, the immediate pred- 
ecessor of Dr. M'Donald ; and John was settled in a parish in 
the south. The Rev. Hugh Calder had a son, named Alexander, 
ordained his colleague and successor before he had completed the 
age of twenty-one. This youth was a burning and shining light, 
but died when men were only beginning to rejoice in his light, 
and to magnify the grace of God that was in him. The Rev. 
Charles Calder had a daughter married to the late Rev. Dr. Stew- 
art, formerly of Dingwall, and afterward of the Canongate church, 
Edinburgh. Grisell Calder, grand-daughter of Mrs. Campbell, 
left a son of the same name with his father, Robert Falconer, 
and a daughter, named Mary. Robert was for many years sher- 
iff of the county of Nairn, and died nearly thirty years ago, leav- 
ing two sons and two daughters. His sister, Mary Falconer, 
was married to the Rev. Henry Clark, minister of the Anti- 
burgher seceder congregation of Boghole, in the county of Nairn. 
She died about the same time with her brother ; and her only 
surviving descendant is she who, for twenty-three years, has 
been the companion of my cares and labors in Canada. Imper- 
fect as this account is, you will not fail to observe, how God has 
been graciously pleased to render the descendants of that emi- 
nently pious woman, and their immediate relatives, eminently 
instrumental in publishing that gospel for which she suffered, 
when it was rare, and therefore precious, in that part of our na- 
tive country." 

* For some interesting notices of Mr. Charles Calder, see Memoirs of the Rev. 
Alexander Stewart, D.D., one of the ministers of Canongate, Edinburgh, pp. 207- 
211, 290-295. 



340 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 



MARGARET M'LAUCHLAN AND MARGARET 
WILSON. 

The years 1684 and 1685 were years of terrible suffering to 
the covenanters. The history of these years is written in letters 
of blood, and they were emphatically called, by the sufferers, 
The killing tunc. The savage ruffians, who were scouring the 
country like incarnate demons, hunted the poor helpless victims 
of their cruelty like wild beasts, over moors and mountains. If 
they met with a person who refused to answer their questions, 
or who did not satisfy them in their answers ; or if they found 
another reading the Bible ; or observed a third apparently 
alarmed or attempting to escape, they reckoned all such persons 
fanatics, and in many instances shot them dead on the spot. 
The devil had gone forth, having great wrath, as if knowing 
that his time was short. Patrick Walker remarks, that during 
these two years, eighty persons were shot in the fields, in cold 
blood ; and he further savs, li Since that time, some that write of 
court affairs of Britain for twenty of these years, assert that the 
very design of that killing time was to provoke the Lord's people 
in the west of Scotland to rise in arms in their own defence, as 
at Pentland, Bothwell, and Ayr's Moss, that they might get the 
sham occasion to raise fire and sword in the west, to make it a 
hunting field, as the duke of York had openly threatened, saying, 
' There is no other way of rooting fanaticism out of it.'"* But 
whatever may be as to this, the ferocity of the persecutors had 
risen to an unprecedented height, creating general alarm, and 
threatening to wear out the saints of the Most High. 

We are now to narrate the history of one of the bloody scenes 
enacted during the last of these years — the year 1685 — the scene 
of the judicial murder of two blameless, inoffensive, and pious 
females, Margaret. M'Lauchlan,t an aged widow, and Margaret 
Wilson, a young girl, who were drowned in the tide at the mouth 
of the river Blednoch, which runs into the sea about a hundred 
yards to the south of the town of Wigton, in Lower Galloway. 
The tragical fate of Isabel Alison and Marion Harvey has already 
been brought under the notice of the reader ;| and the case before 
us is no less touching, whether we consider the advanced age of 
the one sufferer, and the youth of the other, or the kind of death 

* Bioaraph. Presby., vol. i., p. 302. I See pp. 272-300. 

t Or LauchlisoD, which is the name given her in her petition to the privy council 



MARGARET M'LAUCHLAN AND MARGARET WILSON. 341 

to which they were subjected, or the shocking barbarity of their 
ruthless murderers, or the undaunted courage with which they 
suffered and yielded up their spirits to God. 

Margaret Wilson, the younger of the two martyrs, who 
was only about eighteen years of age at the time of her death, 
was daughter of Gilbert Wilson, farmer, of Glenvernock, the 
property of the laird of Castlestewart, in the parish of Penning- 
ham, in Wigtonshire. He was in good outward circumstances ; 
and his farm, which was excellent soil, and in the best condition, 
was well stocked with sheep and cattle. Both he and his wife 
were conformists to prelacy, and regularly attended the ministry 
of the curate of Penningham ; nor could the government lay any- 
thing to their charge. Their children, however, which is rather 
remarkable, were, at an early age, not only well acquainted Avith 
the principles of religion, but, contrary to the example of their 
parents, ardently attached to the persecuted faith, and would on 
no consideration attend the ministry of the prelatic incumbent of 
that parish. On this account, though scarcely of such an age as 
rendered them obnoxious to the law, they were searched for ; 
and, to secure their safety, were compelled to betake themselves, 
like many others, to the desert solitudes of the upper part of 
Galloway. They were, in fact treated in every respect as out- 
laws. Their parents were forbidden, at their highest peril, to 
harbor them, to supply their wants, or to have any intercourse 
with them ; and were even commanded so far to disregard natu- 
ral affection, as to lodge information against them that they might 
be apprehended. But the barbarous and unprincipled men who 
were ravaging Wigtonshire did not stop at this. Mr. Wilson 
being a man of substance, they looked with a greedy eye upon 
his wealth ; and, notwithstanding his own compliance with prel- 
acy, fined him for the nonconformity of his children. In addi- 
tion to this, he was grievously harassed by parties of soldiers, 
who, sometimes to the number of a hundred, would come to his 
house, and not only live at free quarters, but commit that wanton 
destruction upon his property to which, by the fierceness of their 
dispositions they were prompted. To hardships of this nature 
he was subjected for several years ; and these hardships, together 
with his frequent attendance upon courts at Wigton, which was 
thirteen miles distant from his own house, and at Edinburgh re- 
duced him from comparative affluence to poverty. So heavy, 
indeed, were his pecuniary losses — amounting, at a moderate 
calculation, to upward of 5,000 merks — that, though before being 
29* 



342 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

thus pillaged, he was one of the most substantial men in that 
part of the country, he died about the year 1704 or 1705 in des- 
titution, and his widow, who was alive in 1711, then very aged, 
subsisted upon the charity of her friends. This is one instance, 
among many others which might be adduced, in which persons 
of property, against whose loyalty and religion the government 
had nothing to object, were exposed to the spoliation of their 
goods, and were even sometimes reduced to absolute penury, for 
the recusance of those connected with them, and over whom they 
had often no control. Loyal and conforming parents were fined, 
and otherwise punished, for the nonconformity of their children ; 
loyal and conforming husbands for the nonconformity of their 
wives ; loyal and conforming masters for the nonconformity of 
their servants ; loyal and conforming proprietors for the noncon- 
formity of their tenants. The troopers, too, who like licensed 
robbers, traversed the country, in many cases pillaged, with in- 
discriminate wantonness, such as were friendly to the govern- 
ment and conformists to prelacy, and such as were not. 

Margaret Wilson, and her sister, Agnes, who was then only 
about thirteen years of age, at length fell into the hands of the 
persecutors. In the beginning of the year 1685, these two girls, 
to secure their safety, were obliged to leave for some time their 
father's house, and, in company with their brother, a youth of not 
more than sixteen years of age, and other persecuted wanderers, 
to seek shelter, in the mosses, mountains, and caves of Carrick, 
Nithsdale, and Galloway. On the death of Charles II., when 
the persecution was for a brief period relaxed, the two sisters, 
leaving their hiding-places, ventured to come secretly to Wigton, 
to visit some of their fellow-sufferers in the same cause, and par- 
ticularly the aged Margaret M'Lauchlan, whom they greatly 
loved, and who was well qualified to minister comfort and coun- 
sel to them under their troubles. Here both of them were dis- 
covered and made prisoners through the treachery of a man 
named Patrick Stuart, with whom they were personally acquaint- 
ed, and who professed to take a deep and friendly interest in 
their welfare. This base fellow, from what motive it is not said, 
but doubtless either from pure malignity of disposition, or from 
the love of the paltry wages given to informers, purposed to be- 
tray these friendless and unsuspecting girls. To find some plau- 
sible ground of complaint against them, he, with much apparent 
kindness, invited them to go with him and partake of some re- 
freshment, which being brought, he proposed that they should 
drink the king's health. This, as he probably anticipated, from 



MARGARET M'LAUCHLAN AND MARGARET WILSON. 343 

what he knew of their character, they modestly declined to do ; 
upon which he left them, and immediately proceeded to the 
authorities of Wigton, to lodge information against them. A 
party of soldiers was forthwith despatched to apprehend them. 
The two girls were cast into that abominable place called " the 
thieves' hole," and after lying there for some time, were removed 
to the prison in which their beloved friend, Margaret M'Lauch- 
lan, who had been apprehended about the same time, or very 
shortly after, was confined, and of whom we now proceed to give 
some account. 

Margaret M'Lauchlan was the widow of John Mulligen, or 
Millikin, carpenter, a tenant in the parish of Kirkinner, in the 
shire of Galloway, in the farm of Drumjargan, belonging to Colo- 
nel Vans of Barnbarroch ; and she had now nearly reached the 
venerable age of seventy.* She was a plain countrywoman, 
but superior to most women of her station in religious knowl- 
edge ; blameless in her deportment, and a pattern of virtue and 
piety. Being strictly presbyterian in her principles, she had 
regularly absented herself from hearing the curate of the parish 
of Kirkinner ; she had also attended the sermons of the proscribed 
ministers, and had afforded shelter and relief to her persecuted 
nonconforming relations and acquaintances in their wanderings 
and distresses. Honorable as was all this to her character, it 
was, in those days of oppression, regarded as highly criminal ; 
and, on this account, she suffered much in her property, and at 
last was apprehended on the sabbath-day, when engaged in the 
exercise of family worship in her own dwelling, the day of rest 
being now the season when the persecutors were most active in 
searching for " the fanatics," and often most successful in discov- 
ering them. She was immediately carried to prison, in Avhich 
she lay for a long time, and was treated with great harshness, 
not being allowed a fire to warm her, nor a bed upon which to 
lie, nor even an adequate supply of food to satisfy the cravings 
of nature. 

When Margaret M'Lauchlan, Margaret Wilson, and her sister, 
were apprehended, it was demanded of them, as a test of their 
loyalty, that they should swear the abjuration oath. This Avas 
an oath abjuring a manifesto published by the " Society People," 
or the Cameronians, on the 8th of November, 1684,f entitled 

* The inscription on her gravestone in the churchyard of Wigton makes her age 
sixty-three ; but, in her petition to the privy council, she says that she is " about the 
age of threescore [and] ten years." . 

t It was fixed upon the market-crosses of several burghs, and upon a great many 
church-doors. 



344 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

" The Apologetic Declaration and Admonitory Vindication of the 
True Presbyterians of the Church of Scotland, especially anent 
Intelligencers and Informers/' In this manifesto, after expres- 
sing their adherence to their former declarations, in which they 
disowned the authority of Charles Stuart, and declared war against 
him and his accomplices ; and after testifying that, they " utterly 
detest and abhor that hellish principle of killing all who differ in 
judgment or persuasion from them ;" they declare it to be their 
purpose to punish, according to their power, and according to the 
degree of the offence, such as should stretch forth their hands 
against them by shedding their blood on account of their princi- 
ples, or willingly give such information as should lead thereto. 
This step we do not undertake to vindicate, it being " calculated, 
notwithstanding all their qualifications, and in spite of all the 
precautions they might use, to open a door to lawless bloodshed, 
and to give encouragement to assassination. At the same time, 
it is impossible to condemn them with great severity, when we 
reflect that they were cast out of the protection of law, driven out 
of the pale of society, and hunted like wild beasts in the woods 
and on the mountains, to which they had fled for shelter."* It 
is also to be noticed that what they chiefly aimed at was to in- 
spire their persecutors with a wholesome terror ;f and this object 
was to a considerable degree gained in regard to the more active 
and malignant informers, who dared not now, as they had done 
before, to dog the footsteps and discover to the soldiers the Li 
places of men whom intolerable oppression had driven to desper- 
ation. The more virulent and persecuting of the curates in 
dale and Galloway were also so panic-struck on the publi 
of the paper, as to leave their parishes and seek safety elsewhere 
for a time. 

On the government the effect was different : it roused their 
fury to the utmost height. On the 22d of November, they passed 
an act, which Wodrow justly calls a " bloody act." ordaining 
" every person, who owns or will not disown the late treasonable 
declaration upon oath, whether they have arms or not, to be im- 
mediately put to death; there being present two witnesses, and 
the person or persons having commission for that effect"| — an 
act on which is to be charged the blood of not a few who were 

* M'Crie's Review of Tales of My Landlord in liis Miscellaneous Writings, p 4 ! 3. 

t '" The only instances in which it is alleged, so far as we recollect, that it led to 
murder, were those of two soldiers at Swine-Abbay, and of the curate of Carsphairn! 
The last of these was publicly disowned and condemned by the Society People." — 
Ibid., p. 444. 

t Wodrow's History, vol. iv., p. 155. 



MARGARET MLAUCHLAN AND MARGARET WILSON. 345 

shot, in the fields by officers, and even by private sentinels, who 
pretended to be invested with such powers. On the following 
day, they gave commission, with a justiciary power, to certain 
noblemen, gentlemen, and military officers, to convocate all the 
inhabitants, men and women above fourteen years of age (in cer- 
tain parishes named), to execute, by military commission upon 
the place, such of them as owned the " late traitorous declara- 
tion ;" and also to execute the sentence of death on such as re- 
fused to disown it, after trying them by a jury. An oath was 
also framed abjuring the " Apologetic Declaration," and hence 
called " the abjuration oath," which all, both men and Avomen, 
above the age of sixteen years, were required to swear, under 
the pains of high-treason. 

Margaret M'Lauchlan, and the two youthful sisters, Margaret 
and Agnes Wilson, refused to swear the abjuration oath. They 
were accordingly brought to a formal trial before Sir Robert 
Grierson of Lagg,* Colonel David Graham (brother to the bloody 

* Of these commissioners, Grierson of Lagg: lias obtained the most infamous ce- 
lebrity in the annals of the persecution. So cruel nnd brutal was his temper, that 
he seems to have felt an infernal delight in murdering, in cold blood, the unarmed 
and unresisting peasantry of his country. In 1683, he shot five covenanters dead on 
the spot, without giving them leave to pray; and when one of them, Mr. Bell of 
Whiteside, who was acquainted with him, begged for a quarter of an hour to pre- 
pare for death, he remorselessly answered, " What the devil ! have you not got time 
enough to prepare since Bothwell 1" Among the Wodrow MSS. we have met with 
some specimens of his profanity, but they are too shocking to be here repeated. — 
(Vol. xxxvii., 4to, No. 1.) He outlived the persecution nearly half a century, having 
died on the 23d of December, 1733. Many of the cruelties which he perpetrated 
have been recorded in his " Elegy, or, a Mock Lamentation of the Prince of Dark- 
ness upon his Death" — which is supposed to have been written long before the time 
of his demise. Of this production, the following lines, taken from the twenty-first 
edition, are a specimen : — 

" What fatal news is this I hear ! 

On earth who shall my standard bear ? 

For Lagg, who was my champion brave, 

Is dead, and now laid in his grave. 

The want of him is a great grief; 

He was my manager and chief; 

He bore my image on his brow — 

My service he did still avow. 

He had no other Deitie 

But this world, the flesh, and me ! 

Unto us he did homage pay, 

And diji us worship every day. 

In Galloway he was well known — 

His great exploits in it were shown ; 

He was my general in that place ; 

He did the presbyterians chase : 

Through moss, and moor, and many a hag, 

They were pursued by my friend Lagg. 

He many a saint pursued to death ; 

He feared neither hell nor wrath ! 



346 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

Claverhouse), Major "Windram, Captain Strachan, and Provost 
Cultrain at "VVigton, on the 13th of April, 1685. In their indict- 
ment, they were charged with being at the battle of Bothwell- 
bridge, at the skirmish of Ayr's Moss, at twenty field conventi- 
cles, and at an equal number of house conventicles. The first 
two charges were notoriously false. None of the panels had 
ever been within many miles of either of these places. It is, 
besides, to be noticed that at the time of the battle of Bothwell- 
bridge, the two girls were mere children (the one only about 
seven years of age, and the other only about eleven or twelve), 
while sixty-five years had passed over the head of the aged 
widow ; and it can not for a moment be supposed that two girls 
of so tender an age, or that an humble, inoffensive female, who 
had nearly reached the utmost limits of human earthly existence, 
could be concerned in that insurrection. The same remark ap- 
plies to the skirmish at Ayr's Moss, which took place only a little 
more than a year after the rising at Bothwell-bridge. The other 
charges brought against these sufferers may have been true in 
part or in whole ; but nothing was proved against them. Being 
again required to swear the abjuration oath, all of them refused 
to swear it ; and this refusal seems to have been the main ground 
upon which they were condemned. After the mockery of a trial, 
a jury was found so unprincipled as to bring in a verdict of guilty 
against the whole three ; and the sentence pronounced upon them 
was, that, upon the 11th of May, they should be tied to stakes 
fixed within the flood-mark in the water of Blednoch, near Wig- 
ton, where the sea flows at high water, there to be drowned ! 
They were commanded to receive their sentence on their bended 
knees ; and refusing to kneel, they were pressed down by force 
fill it was pronounced.* But they were by no means daunted ; 
they heard the cruel sentence with much composure, and even 
with cheerful countenances, accounting it their honor that they 
were called to suffer in the cause of Christ. 

This extraordinary sentence could not but produce great ex- 
citement in Wigton, and the friends of the three females were 

His conscience was so cauterized, 

He refused nothing that I pleased : 

For which he's had my kindness still, 

Since he his labors did fulfil. 

Any who read the Scriptures through, 

I'm sure they'll find but very few 

Of my best friends that's mentioned there, 

That could with Grier of Lager compare !" 

The History of Galloway, vol. ii., pp. 281, 282. 
* Cloud of Witnesses, p. 301. 



MARGARET M'LAUCHLAN AND MARGARET WILSON. 347 

plunged into the deepest distress. The afflicted father of the 
two girls, on going to Edinburgh, was allowed to purchase, at the 
price of one hundred poxinds sterling, the life of his younger 
daughter, in consequence of her tender age. When in Edin- 
burgh, he would also, no doubt, use every means in his power to 
save the life of his other daughter ; and his intercessions, as we 
shall afterward see, had a mollifying effect upon the members 
of the privy council. At the same time, Margaret Wilson's friends 
did all they could to prevail with her to swear the abjuration 
oath, and to promise to attend the ministry of the curate of the 
parish in which she lived, but without effect ; for by no solicita- 
tions would she surrender her convictions of truth and duty, what- 
ever it might cost her. During her imprisonment, she wrote a 
long letter to her relations, highly honorable to her character. It 
was full of the deep and affecting sense which she had of God's 
love to her soul, and expressed an entire resignation to his sov- 
ereign disposal. It also contained a vindication of her refusal 
to save her life by swearing the abjuration oath, and by engaging 
to conform to prelacy — written with a cogency of argument and 
a solidity of judgment far above her years and education.* The 
aged Margaret M'Lauchlan, it would appear, exhibited in prison 
less heroic resolution than her youthful companion. She was 
induced to send a petition to the privy council, praying them to 
recall the sentence of death pronounced upon her, acknowledg- 
ing the justice of the sentence, and expressing her willingness 
to take the abjuration oath, and regularly to attend her parish 
church. The petition is as follows : — 

" Unto his Grace, my Lord High Commissioner, and remanent 
Lords of his Majesty's Most Honorable Privy Council — The 
humble Supplication of Margaret Lauchlison, now prisoner in 
the Tolbooth of Wigton : Showeth, 

" That whereas, I being justly condemned to die by the lords 
commissioners of his majesty's most honorable privy council and 
justiciary, in a court holden at Wigton, the 13th day of April in- 
stant, for my not disowning that traitorous ' Apologetical Decla- 
ration' lately affixed at several parish churches within this king- 
dom, and my refusing the oath of abjuration of the same, which 
was occasioned by my not perusing the same, and now I having 
considered the said Declaration, do acknowledge the same to be 
traitorous, and tends to nothing but rebellion and sedition, and to 
be quite contrary unto the written Word of God, and am content 
to abjure the same with my whole heart. 

* Wodrow's History, vol. iv., p. 248. 



348 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

" May it therefore please your grace and remanent lords, as 
said is, to take my case to your serious consideration, being about 
the age of threescore [and] ten years, and to take pity and com- 
passion on me, and recall the foresaid sentence so justly pro- 
nounced against me, and to grant warrant to any your grace 
thinks fit to administrat the oath of abjuration to me, and, upon 
my taking of it, to order my liberation ; and your supplicant shall 
live hereafter a good and faithful subject in time coming, and 
shall frequent the ordinances and live regularly, and give what 
other obedience your grace and remanent lords shall prescribe 
thereanent, and your petitioner shall ever pray. 

" Written by William Mom. 
" W. Duxbar, witness. 
" Will. Gordoux, witness."* 

Yielding to the prayer of this petition, and to the representa- 
tions of Margaret Wilson's father, the privy council granted a 
reprieve to these two females, and recommended them to the sec- 
retaries of state for his majesty's pardon. The act of council is 
as follows : — 

" Edixeurgh, April 30, 1685. 

" The lords of his majesty's privy council do hereby reprieve 
the execution of the sentence of death pronounced by the justices 

against Margaret Wilson and Margaret Lauchli son, until the 

day of , and discharge the magistrates of Wigton from put- 
ting of the said sentence to execution against them until the fore- 
said day ; and recommend the said Margaret Wilson and Marga- 
ret Lauchlison to the lords secretaries of state, to interpose with 
his most sacred majesty for the royal remission to them."f 

But, notwithstanding this reprieve, these two women were, on 
the day appointed (the 11th of May), conducted from the tolbooth 
of Wigton to the place of execution, amid a numerous crowd of 
spectators, who had assembled to witness so unusual a sight. 
They were guarded by Major Windram| with a company of sol- 
diers, and, on arriving at the place, were fastened to stakes fixed 

* Warrants of Privy Council. t Register of Acts of Privy Council. 

% It is not unworthy of nohce, as affording- a singular instance of the sovereignty 
of Divine grace, that several of this persecutor's children gave pleasing- evidence of 
early piety. Mr. James Renwick, in a letter " to the Honorable Mr. Robert Ham- 
ilton," dated July 9, 1684, say? : " A grand persecutor, called Major Windram, had 
three children, who within a little while of [each] other died — one of them a very 
young boy, and two daushters come to the years of discretion, who died very sweetly 
and pleasingly — declaring that the Lord's hand was stretched forth as-ainst them 
because of the hand their father hath in shedding the blood of the saints ; and ob- 
tested him, before God, that he would quit the course he followed ; which things 
had some though no lasting effect npon him." — Ren wick's Letters, p. 81. 



MARGAEET M'LAUCHLAN AND MARGARET WILSON. 319 

in the sand, between high and low water mark. Margaret 
M'Lauchlan, who is said to have now manifested great fortitude, 
though, when in prison, she had offered to make concessions, 
was tied to the stake placed nearest the advancing tide, that she 
might perish first, for the obvious purpose of terrifying into sub- 
mission the younger sufferer, who was bound to a stake nearer the 
shore. The multitude looked on, thrilled with horror. The 
flood gradually made its way to the aged matron, rising higher 
and higher at each successive wave, " mounting up from knee, 
waist, breast, neck, chin, lip," until it choked and overwhelmed 
her. Margaret Wilson witnessed the whole scene, and knew 
that she would soon share the same fate ; but her steadfastness 
remained unshaken ; and so far from exhibiting any symptoms 
of terror, she displayed a calm courage, rivalling that of the most 
intrepid martyrs. When her fellow-sufferer was struggling in 
the waters with the agonies of death, a heartless bystander, per- 
haps one of the soldiers, asked the youthful Margaret, to Avliom 
the tide had not yet advanced so far, what she thought of the 
spectacle before her. " What do I see," she answered, " but 
Christ, in one of his members, wrestling there ? Think you that 
we are the sufferers 1 No, it is Christ in us ; for he sends none 
a warfare upon their own charges." 

When bound to the stake, Margaret Wilson sang several verses 
of the twenty-fifth psalm, beginning at the seventh verse : — 

" Let not the errors of my youth, 

Nor sins remembered be : 
In mercy for thy goodness' sake, 

O Lord, remember me. 
The Lord is good and gracious, 

He upright is also : 
He therefore sinners will instruct, 

In ways that they should go," &c. 

She then repeated, with a calm and even cheerful voice, a por- 
tion of the eighth chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Romans ; and, 
through a steadfast faith in the great and consoling truths exhibit- 
ed in that sublime chapter, and in the interesting verses of the 
psalm she had sung, she was enabled to meet death with unshrink- 
ing courage, looking forward with humble hope to that exceeding 
great and eternal weight of glory, which would do more than 
counterbalance all her sufferings in the cause of Christ. She 
next engaged in prayer ; and, while so emploj-ed, the waters had 
risen upon her so high as to reach her lips, and she began to 
struggle with the agonies of death. At this moment, by the com- 
mand of her murderers, Avho pretended to be willing to preserve 
30 



350 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

her life, provided she should swear the abjuration oath,* the cords 
which bound her to the stake were unloosened, and she was 
pulled out of the waters. As soon as she recovered and was 
able to speak, it was asked her, by Major Win dram's orders, if 
she would pray for the king. With the Christian meekness 
which formed so engaging a feature in her character, she an- 
swered, " I wish the salvation of all men, and the damnation of 
none." " Dear Margaret," exclaimed a friend, deeply moved 
with pity, and anxious to save her life, " say, God save the king ! 
say, God save the king !" With the greatest composure, she re- 
plied, " God save him, if he will ; for it is his salvation I de- 
sire."! Immediately her friends called out to Windram, " Sir, 
she hath said it ! she hath said it !" But with this her murder- 
ers were not satisfied. Lagg, we are told, bellowed out, " Damned 
bitch ! we do not want such prayers ; tender the oath to her ;"| 
and Windram, coming near her, demanded that she should swear 
the abjuration oath, else she should be again instantly cast into 
the sea. She needed not long to deliberate ; in an instant her 
resolve was taken ; preferring to die rather than to do what 
she believed would be a denial of Christ and his truth, she firm- 
ly replied, " I will not ; I am one of Christ's children ; let me 
go." And so, after her sufferings were thus inhumanly protracted, 
and after being thus cruelly tantalized with the hope of life, she 
was, by Windram's orders, thrust into the waters, which speedily 
closed over her for the last time. 

These females, it would appear, as has been said before, were 
executed in disregard of the reprieve granted them by the privy 
council, who recommended them to the royal clemency. The 
day to which they were reprieved is left a blank in the records 
of the council ; but there is every reason to believe that it would 
be to a later day than the 11th of May, as at that period, the fa- 
cilities of communication being greatly less than at present, there 
would hardly be time, between the 30th of April and the 1 1 th 

* We say, pretended; because it may fairly be questioned, from what we know 
of the character of her persecutors, whether her life would have been spared, even 
though she had sworn the abjuration oath. The other questions which it was com- 
mon to put to the covenanters might also have been put to her, as, " Will you re- 
nounce the covenant?" — " Was the killing of the archbishop of St. Andrews mur- 
der 1" — " Was the rising of Bothwell bridge rebellion V — and failing to answer any 
of these questions In the affirmative, she might, after all, have been drowned by 
these blood-thirsty men. 

t It is therefore a mistake to say, as Chambers has done in his picture of Scot- 
land (vol. i., pp., 273, 274), that our two martyrs "were offered their lives when at 
the slake, on condition of saying, ' God save the king,' and on refusing were left to 
be overwhelmed by the rising waves/' — See Appendix, No. X. 

t Aikman's Annals of the Persecution, p. 518. 



MARGARET M'LAUCHLAN AND MARGARET WILSON. 351 

of May, to get a return from London. It seems, therefore, high- 
ly probable that our two martyrs were, by the brutality of their 
judges and the magistrates of Wigton, executed without orders 
from the government. But of the blood of these women the gov- 
ernment were not altogether guiltless. They had ordained the 
abjuration oath to be put to all persons above sixteen years of 
age, whether male or female ; and such as refused to swear it, 
were liable to be tried and punished capitally. They had invested 
inferior officers with the power of trying and condemning such as 
refused it. They had even given instructions to their commis- 
sioners, to condemn such women as had been signally active in 
supporting the Apologetic Declaration, to be drowned;* and 
though, in the present instance, they granted a reprieve to these 
condemned women, and recommended them to the mercy of the 
king, yet, when their unprincipled and hardened officers executed 
the sentence contrary to orders, they did not even censure them 
for such a deed of revolting atrocity. 

The bodies of the two martyrs on being taken from the waters, 
were buried in the churchyard of Wigton. A stone was after- 
ward erected to their memory. The particular date of its erec- 
tion can not now be ascertained, but, from the freedom of its lan- 
guage, it is evident that it was after the revolution. It is placed 
in the wall of the church, and the inscription upon it, copied ver- 
batim et literatim, is as follows : — 

HERE LIES MARGARAT LACHLANE ™ 

WHO WAS BY UNJUST LAW SENTENCED g 

TO DYE BY LAGG STRACHANE WINRAME > 

AND GRAME AND TYED TO A STAKE WITH ^ 

IN THE FLOOD FOR HER* U 

ME MENTO MORI g 

* ADHERENCE TO SCOTLAND'S REFORMATION § 

COVENANTS NATIONAL AND SOLEMN LEAGUE 
AGED 63. 1685. 






LET EARTH AND STONE STILL WITNESS BEARE 
THERE LYES A VIRGINE MARTYR HERE. 
MURTHERD FOR OWNING CHRIST SUPREME, 
£ «E O jo HEAD OF HIS CHURCH AND NO MORE CRIME 

BUT NOT ABJURING PRESBYTERY, 
AND HER NOT OWING PRELACY, 
THEY HER CONDEMND, BY UNJUST LAW : 
OF HEAVEN NOR HELL THEY STOOD NO AW. 
WETHIN THE SEA TYD TO A STAKE ; 
SHE SUFFERED FOR CHRIST JESUS SAKE 
THE ACTORS OF THIS CRUEL CRIME 
WAS LAGG. STRACHAN. WINRAM. AND GRAHAME 
NEITHER YOUNG YEARS, NOR Y'ET OLD AGE 
COULD STOP THE FURY-OF THERE RAGE. 



■J«Kfc H 



pj p 

w o fe 

a p 3 



* Wodrow's History, vol. iv., p. 165. 



352 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

It may here be stated that a monument in honor of these and 
other martyrs whose ashes repose in the churchyard of Wigton, 
is about to be erected. A sermon was preached, by the Rev. 
Dr. William Symington, of Glasgow, in the parish church of 
Wigton, on Sabbath, the 24th of September, 1848, in aid of a 
fund for carrying that object into effect. The subject chosen by 
the preacher was the opening of the fifth seal, Rev. vi. 9-11 ; 
and, in an address at the close of public worship, he thus vindi- 
cates the erection of such memorials to the memory of our mar- 
tyrs : " Let not our object be mistaken. It is not, by any means, 
to canonize the sufferers ; or to imitate the conduct of the church 
of Rome, by cherishing a superstitious and undue veneration for 
departed saints. Our object is to draw attention to the princi- 
ples, rather than to the persons of the martyrs. Aud this we 
propose to do by commemorating their noble deeds, and their 
sufferings. We affect to tell the simple tale of their martyrdom, 
and to renew those touching memorials which are falling into a 
state of decay and obliteration by the lapse of time. The prin- 
ciple upon which we act, we regard as distinctly recognised in 
the approved example of saints, the statements of Holy Writ, and 
the procedure of God himself. We have read of ' the pillar of 
Rachel's grave,' reared by patriarchal hands, ' in the way to 
Ephrath, which is Bethlehem.' We can not forget the de< 
tions ' that the righteous shall be in everlasting remembrance,' 
and that ' the memory of the just is blessed ;' nor that one of the 
marks of the Divine displeasure against the Avicked consists in 
' cutting off" their memory from the' earth,' and making ' all their 
memory to perish.' Nor can we suffer ourselves to overlook the 
circumstance, that the 11th chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews 
is just a noble monumental pile, raised by the Spirit, in com- 
memoration of elders who had received a good report, and whose 
names, lest they should pass away into oblivion, are legibly in- 
scribed on its surface." 

Chambers, in his picture of Scotland, relates what he calls " a 
strange and ridiculous story," which is told at Wigton, connected 
with the drowning of these women. " One of the most active 
persons at the execution," says he, " was, it seems, the town offi- 
cer of Wigton, who, when the girls were raised out of the water, 
and refused to save their lives by the simple expression above- 
mentioned (God save the king), 'took his halbert, and, pr 
them down again into the water, exclaimed, with e 
' Then take another drink, my hearties.' Heaven for this is said 
to have afflicted him with an intolerable and unquenchable thirst, 



MARGARET M'LAUCHLAN AND MARGARET WILSON. 353 

insomuch that he never after durst venture abroad without carry- 
ing along with him an enormous jar full of water, wherewithal 
to gratify his unnatural appetite. As he crawled about with this 
singular load, people used to pass him by Avith silent horror ; for, 
though his misfortune might have been the result of disease, it 
was, in that superstitious age, universally believed to be the man- 
ifestation of Divine vengeance. "f This traditionary anecdote we 
have given as we find it, without vouching for its truth. But the 
assertion of this popular writer, that it was superstitious to regard 
the calamity which befell this man, on the supposition that the 
story is true, as the manifestation of Divine vengeance, since it 
might have been the result of disease, is most certainly unsound 
in theology. Even granting it to have been the result of disease, 
this would not prove that it was not a judgment of God ; for dis- 
ease, like everything else, is under his direction and control, 
and he can make it the minister of his justice as well as any 
other agent, even when it is brought on, not by any supernatural 
infliction, but in the ordinary course of nature. No doubt, in 
cases of this sort, a mistaken, an uncharitable, and even an im- 
pious interpretation, may be put upon Providence, in reference 
to the calamities which befall our felloAv-creatures.* But still it 

* As an example of this, we may quote the following: passage from one of Mr. 
Robert Baillie's letters. Writing to Mr. Spang, apparently in June, 16.38, he says : 
" Mr. Gillespie remains there (in London), sorely sick, some think in displeasure mat 
his desires were not granted. However, at his last going to Hampton court, he got 
no speech of the Protector; if this grieved him I know not; but he went immedi- 
ately from Hamptoun court to Wombledoun, Lambert's house, being Saturday, at 
night; and having engaged to preach on Sunday morning, before sermon, he had 
five stools, and after his painful preaching, fourscore, before he rested ; thereafter, 
for many days, a great flax and fever, together with the breach of a hulcer in the 
guts, put him to the very brink of death. Many thought it the evident hand of God 
upon him, and would not have sorrowed for his death. For myself, I was grieved, 
foreseeing the hart of our college by his removal." — (Baillie's Letters and Journals, 
vol. iii., p. 356 ) Mr. Patrick Gillespie, who was then principal of the university of 
Glasgow, was a zealous protestor during the controversy between the resolution- 
ers and the protestors ; and the men who are here said to have viewed his illness 
as a judgment of God, were resolulioners This accounts for their uncharitable 
and impious explanation of the conduct of Divine providence in bringing that severe 
illness upon Gillespie. It was the suggestion of the animosity of party spirit; and 
it was substantially saying, that God was such a one a3 themselves. It threw no 
light on God's providence toward Gillespie, but it threw light upon the temper of 
their own minds. It indicated plainly enough, that had they been intrusted with 
the government of the world, disease would soon have thinned the ranks of the 
protesters, or have even exterminated the whole race. Had this been done, we 
would have had few martyrs during the persecution of Charles II., for the ministers 
who refused to conform to prelacy, and who suffered for nonconformity, were nearly 
all protesters ; the most of the resolutioners, though they had sworn against prela- 
cy, having too little principle, and too little courage, to make sacrifices for conscience' 
sake. Happily for the protesters, the government of the world was in more merci- 
ful hands than 'in those of the resolutioners. It may be added, that Gillespie was 
again restored to health. t Pp. 273, 274. 

30* 



354 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

must be admitted by every observer of Providence, altogether 
apart from the authority of revelation, that though wickedness, 
and even atrocious wickedness, may often pass unpunished in 
the present life, yet there are instances in which it is punished 
in the course of events, in so striking a manner, as to extort, 
even from the most unthinking, and the least inclined to super- 
stition, the acknowledgment that such visitations bear the impress 
of the hand of a righteous God. " In the Divine management 
of the fortuitous events of life," says Isaac Taylor, " there is, in 
the first place, visible some occasional flashings of that retribu- 
tive justice which, in the future world, is to obtain ifs long post- 
poned and perfected triumph. There are instances which, 
though not very common, are frequent enough to keep alive the 
salutary fears of mankind ; wherein vindictive visitations speak 
articulately in attestation of the righteous judgment of God upon 
them that do evil. Outrageous villanies, or appalling profane- 
ness, sometimes draw upon the criminal the instant bolt of Di- 
vine wrath ; and in so remarkable a manner, that the most irre- 
ligious minds are quelled with a sudden awe, and confess the 
fearful hand of God."* 

Another singular anecdote, connected with the drowning of 
these women, has been preserved by the industrious Wodrow. 
Between nineteen and twenty years after the Revolution, a 
daughter of Margaret M'Lauchlan, dreamed, it would seem, that 
her mother appeared to her and bade her go and tell Provost 
Cultrain, of Wigton, who was a very active instrument in her 
death, and who was then alive, that he must soon stand before 
the bar of the great God, to give in his account. Within a few 
months, or a few weeks after this dream, the provost died. Hav- 
ing gone, in the beginning of November, 1708, to hold a justice- 
court at Stranraer, he no sooner stood up to make a speech when 
the court assembled, than his tongue faltered, and he fell back. 
He was immediately carried to his lodgings, at which he died 
Avithin a few days. Wodrow had received some hints of this 
matter from Mr. Henry Davidson, minister of Galashiels ;f but 
from his extreme care in authenticating, as far as possible, the 
information communicated to him, he wrote a letter to Mr. Wil- 
liam Campbell, minister of Kirkinner, requesting him to examine 
Margaret M'Lauchlan's daughter, who was then alive, in refer- 

* Natural History of Enthusiasm, pp. 135, 136. 

t In a letter from biro, dated August 29, 1717 ; Letters to Wodrow, vol. x., 4 to, 
No. 47, Mr. Davidson sa3's, " Hu (Provost Cultrain) was acquainted with the dream 
some months before his death, but he jested at it." 



MARGARET M'LAUCHLAN AND MARGARET WILSON. 355 

ence to her dream. The answer Mr. Campbell returned is as fol- 
lows :* " Rev. Dear Brother : — ... In compliance with your 
desire anent Elizabeth Millikin's dream, know that I went and 
discoursed her this day, in order to give you the genuine account 
of it. The said Elizabeth dreamed, some weeks or months be- 
fore the quarter sessions that met in November, 1708, that her 
mother, Margaret Lauchlisson, came to her, at the cross of Wig- 
ton, with garb, gesture and countenance that she had five minutes 
before she was drowned in Blednoch, and said to her, ' Eliza- 
beth, go and warn Provost Cultrain that he must shortly compear 
before the tribunal of the great God, to answer for his ways ;' 
and immediately her sleep was broken, and it made such an im- 
pression upon her, that she resolved, for her own exoneration, 
and the provost's edification, prudently and meekly to communi- 
cate the said dream to the said William Cultrain, of Drummor- 
ral, with the first convenience ; but not finding or expecting that, 
she told the dream to Bailie Lafries, Drummoral's friend, being 
married to Lady Drummoral's sister, a man of age, gravity, and 
experience, and an elder in Wigton ; and solemnly desired and 
engaged him to signify the said dream to the said Drummoral ; 
and she doubted not but the said Bailie Lafries did tell the said 
Drummoral. And, accordingly, in the beginning of November, 
1708, he rode from Wigton to the quarter session of the justices 
of the shire, that met that time at Stranraer, and there, on Wed- 
nesday, at the court table, was suddenly struck with a lethargy, 
and was carried to his quarters, and continued speechless till 
Saturday, the 8th of November, and then died."f Mr. Campbell 
adds : " The said Elizabeth is poor but pious ; a widow indeed, 
the worthy daughter of such an honored, martyred mother. It 
hath pleased God lately to afflict her by a sore fall in her walk- 
ing home from this church ; and having a large Bible under her 
arm, and falling with a great deal of violence upon that side 
where her Bible was, it has broken some of her ribs, and disa- 
bles her for business. I have been her acquaintance these six- 
teen years. I know she is poor and straitened ; but I never 
heard her say she wanted anything. If ye please, procure and 
send Mr. Martin, bookseller at Edinburgh some supply." 

* The letter is dated April 11, 1718. 

t Letters to Wodrow, vol. x., 4to, No. 57. In a subsequent letter to Wodrow, 
dated Kirkinner, May 14, 1718, Mr. Campbell says, " Next morning, after I was 
favored -with yours, 1 discoursed Elizabeth Milliken, but she can not give you fur- 
ther satisfaction as to the circumstances of that dream ; only she dreamed it in her 
own bed, in the town of Barnbarroch ; and all the relations of Provost Cultrain and 
Bailie Lafries deny they know anything of the bailie's informing the provost, or the 
provost's answer." — Ibid., vol. x., 4to, No. 59. 



356 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 



LADY ANNE MACKENZIE, 

COUNTESS OF BALCARRES, AFTERWARD COUNTESS OF ARGYLL. 

Lady Anne Mackenzie was the eldest daughter arid coheiress 
of Colin, first earl of Seaforth, by his wife, Lady Margaret Seton, 
third daughter of Alexander, first earl of Dunfermline. In an 
old MS., her father, who was the most powerful of the Highland 
chiefs next to Argyll, is described as " a most religious and vir- 
tuous lord. He caused build the castle of Brahati, and [in] every 
barony of his Highlands caused build a church, and left a dona- 
tion to the town of Channoric, called Fortrose, to hold up a gram- 
mar-school. He was much liked by his king, and by all that 
ever was with him."* Lady Anne, in early life, lost her father, 
who died on the 15th of April, 1633, leaving behind him another 
daughter, Lady Jean. Lady Jean was married, first, to John, 
master of Berricdale ; and, secondly, to Alexander, first Lord 
Duffus ; having, to her first husband, three sons, among whom 
was George, sixth earl of Caithness ; and to her second, four 
sons. She died in childbed, on the 31st of March, 1648. Lady 
Anne and her sister Lady Jean were served heirs-portioners of 
their father, on the 29th of November, 1636, and on the 28th of 
February, 1637. As in these retours Lady Anne is placed first, 
it may be concluded that she was the eldest daughter. The titles 
devolved on her father's brother, George, who thus becaim 
ond earl of Seaforth. f 

Lady Anne received, in her tender years, a scriptural educa- 
tion, and her heart appears even then to have been touched by 
Divine grace with love to God, and engaged to attend in good 
earnest to the things which belonged to her everlasting peace. 
Besides the religious instruction received under the domestic 
roof, she enjoyed the advantages of an evangelical and faithful 
gospel ministry. She had also opportunities of frequently 
mingling in the society of such as feared God. Subjected to 
these and other religious influences, she increased in pi. 
she advanced in days and years ; growing in love to God, in 
love to his service, and in love to those who gave evidence of 
being his children. This we learn from the reference which 
Richard Baxter, the celebrated nonconformist divine, makes to 
her early life, in a dedicatory epistle addressed to her, prefixed 

* duoted in Lord Lindsay's Lives of the Lindsays, vol. ii., p. 33. 
t Douglas's Peerage, vol. ii., p. 482. 



COUNTESS OF BALCARRES. 357 

to Lis treatise, entitled, " The Mischiefs of Self-Ignorance, and 
the Benefits of Self-Acquaintance." Speaking of her soul as 
" replenished with the precious fruits of the Spirit, and beautified 
with the image of her Lord," he says, " There you can peruse 
the records of his mercy, and think with gratitude and delight 
how he did first illuminate you, and draw and engage your heart 
unto himself; what advantages he got upon you, and what in- 
iquity he prevented by the mercies of your education, and how 
he secretly took acquaintance with you in your youth ; how he 
delivered you from worldly snares ; how he caused you to savor 
the things of the Spirit ; how he planted you in a sound, well- 
ordered church, where he quickened and conducted you by a 
lively, faithful ministry, and watered his gifts by the constant 
powerful preaching of his Word ; where discipline was for a 
defence ; and where your heart was warmed with the commu- 
nion of the saints ; and where you learned to worship God in 
spirit and in truth ; and where you were taught so effectually by 
God to discern between the precious and the vile, and to love 
those that are born of God, whom the world knoweth not, that 
no subtleties or calumnies of the serpent can unteach it you, or 
ever be able to separate you from that love."* 

In addition to early piety, Lady Anne, as she advanced to the 
age of womanhood, possessed great personal attractions, and a 
combination of the best qualities which can adorn the female mind. 
David, Lord Balcarres, who was married to her aunt (her moth- 
er's sister, Lady Sophia Seton, fourth daughter of Alexander, first 
earl of Dunfermline, and in whose family, on paying them a 
visit, she occasionally stayed for some time), describes her as of 
" a mild nature and sweet disposition," " and wise withal." To 
this nobleman she afterward became more nearly related, by her 
marriage with his son Alexander, her full cousin, who was " so 
hopeful a youth, that he had the respect and love of all that knew 
him," and who, in 1650, became earl of Balcarres. f She had 
early made a deep impression on the heart of Alexander, and his 
affection for her he had long cherished, without making it known 
either to herself or to any one else. But, at length, about the close 
of the year 1639, at which time she had been staying for some 
time with his parents, the strength of his passion overcoming, to 
a certain extent, the bashful timidity of early and honorable love, 
he told both his father and mother, three days before she left 

* Baxter's Works, folio, London, 1707, vol. if., p. 762. 

t He was served heir to his father on the 24th of October, 1643 ; and on repairing 
to Charles II., upon the arrival of his majesty in Scotland in 1650, was created by 
him earl of Balcarres. 



358 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

them, which was in November, of his strong attachment to her — 
that it had " been rooted in his heart this long time, and [that he] 
could conceal it no longer." He also told his mother that he 
" had never shown any such thing to her by word," and earnestly 
desired her to speak to the young lady in his behalf; which, how- 
ever, she did not do, though she afterward wrote to her on the 
subject. His addresses were cordially received by Lady Anne, who 
indeed appears very soon to have been as deeply smitten with the 
tender passion as himself. But, as the proverb says, the course 
of true love seldom runs smooth. Her uncle, the new earl of 
Seaforth, from motives of self-interest, was opposed to the union, 
though it was highly agreeable to all the other friends of both 
parties. The hearts of the two lovers were, indeed, too fully 
engaged for his opposition being deemed a sufficient obstacle to 
the completion of their wishes ; but they were very desirous, if 
possible, to secure his consent ; and this occasioned an interesting 
correspondence between the families — from which our space, 
however, will permit us to give only one or two extracts. The 
first letter in the series is from the father of young Balcarres to 
the earl of Lauderdale, dated November, 1639, in which he in- 
forms him of his son's attachment to Lady Anne M'Kenzie, and 
of the earl of Seaforth's opposition to their marriage, " because 
he thought he had no new alliance by it." Lauderdale, in his 
reply, which is dated the 28th of December, after expressing it 
as his opinion that the earl of Seaforth, though she married with- 
out his consent, would be bound to pay her the portion left her 
by her father's will, notwithstanding the obligation it imposed 
upon her to marry with the consent of her uncle, adds : " If the 
case were my own, I would gladly go about to obtain his con- 
sent ; but if he should prove too difficile, I would, as the proverb 
is, ' Thank God, and be doing without his approbation.' " By 
this opposition on the part of the lady's uncle, the pride of young 
Balcarres was somewhat wounded, and his temper in some de- 
gree ruffled ; but, secure in her affection, it was his resolute pur- 
pose, should Seaforth prove unyielding, to act upon the only 
alternative then left him (according to the earl of Lauderdale's 
advice), to marry her without his consent. The spirited youth, 
mustering up his self-respect, thus writes to John, Lord Lindsay, 
of Byres : " Indeed, my lord, I shall be very glad to have his 
consent to it, and shall use all means for it, since he is her uncle ; 
but if he will not, I believe your lordship shall as publicly see 
how little power he has of either her or her means, and that I 
am as little curious for alliance with him as he is with me if I 



COUNTESS OF BALCAKRES. 359 

had no other end before me ; for, in truth, it. is neither his alliance 
nor her means has made me intend it." Appeals were made to 
the earl of Seaforth, in favor of the match, in letters written to 
him by Lord Lindsay of Byres, and by the earls of Winton and 
Dunfermline ; and young Balcarres also wrote him on the sub- 
ject in a firm but respectful tone. At last, Seaforth, finding that 
his opposition would prove unavailing, gave a tardy and reluc- 
tant consent ; and the happy pair, after this vexatious delay, Avhich 
young Balcarres, it would appear, bore with no small degree of 
impatience, were united in wedlock in April, 1640.* 

Among the friends of Lady Anne, who warmly advocated the 
union, was the earl of Rothes. After her marriage, this nobleman 
wrote her a " homely but a warm-hearted letter," particularly en- 
joining upon her the duty of economy in the new situation into 
which she was now brought. The letter, which is dated " Les- 
lie, 15th May, 1640," begins thus : " My Heart — I have sent Mr. 
David Ayton with your counts, since my intromission ;t they are 
very clear and well instructed ; but truly your expense hath been 
over-large this last year ; it will be about three thousand six hun- 
dred merks, which indeed did discontent me when I looked on 
it. I hope you will mend it in time coming. Your husband," his 
lordship adds, " hath a very noble heart, and much larger than his 
fortune, and except you be both an example and exhorter of him 
to be sparing, he will go over-far ; both he, my lord, and lady, 
love you so well, that if ye incline to have those things which 
will beget expense, they will not be wanting, although it should 
do them harm .... therefore go very plain in your clothes, and 
play very little, and seek God heartily, who can alone make your 
life contented here, and give you that chief content, the hope of 
happiness hereafter. The Lord bless you !"| 

" This good advice," says Lord Lindsay, " was not thrown 
away. Never did any marriage turn out happier. Lady Anne 
proved a most affectionate wife, a most kind and judicious mother ; 
and though of the ' mild nature' and ' sweet disposition' praised 
by Lord Balcarres, was truly, as he adds, ' wise withal,' and ca- 
pable, a.s events afterward proved, of heroic firmness, and the 
most undaunted resolution." 

In the stirring times in which they lived, young Balcarres joined 
the covenanters, whom he greatly aided both by his counsels in 
the cabinet and by his valor in the field. He commanded a troop 

* Lord Lindsay's Lives of the Lindsays, vol. ii., pp. 34-4-1. 

t That is, " Since I acted in your affairs." 

X Lord Lindsay's Lives of the Lindsays, vol. ii., p. 44. 



360 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

of horse in the covenanters' army, at the battle of Alford, 2d of 
July, 1615, when General Bailiie was defeated by the marquis 
of Montrose. He was one of the commissioners despatched by 
the parliament of Scotland, 19th of December, 1646, to King 
Charles I., with their last proposals, which his majesty rejected ; 
upon which the Scottish army surrendered him to the English 
parliament, and retired from England. He was, however, of un- 
daunted loyalty to his sovereign, which indeed he carried too 
far, supporting the duke of Hamilton's engagement — an underta- 
king justly considered inconsistent with the obligation of the Sol- 
emn League and Covenant. When Charles II. marched into 
England, in 1651, he was left to command the troops on the 
north of the Forth, and in the Highlands, where, through his mar- 
riage with the daughter of the earl of Seaforth, and his friendship 
with the marquis of Huntly, and the clans, he had great power. 
But the affairs of Charles becoming, on the defeat of his army at 
Worcester, to all appearance hopeless, the earl, in December that 
year, capitulated with the English on favorable conditions, and 
disbanded his regiments. In 1652, he settled with his family at 
St. Andrews, keeping up a correspondence with his exiled sov- 
ereign ; and, in 1653, he again took up arms, and joined in a last 
ineffectual attempt to uphold the royal cause against Cromwell. 
In January, 1654, his estates were sequestrated by Cromwell;* 
and he withdrew to the continent, joining Charles II. at Paris. f 

Lady Balcarres, from the strength of her affection for the earl, 
shared in the hardships and dangers to which he was exposed, 
in those troublous times, accompanying him in all his military 
wanderings. " The earl of Balcarres," says Baxter, " was a cov- 
enanter, but an enemy to Cromwell's perfidiousne.ss, and true to 
the person and authority of the king ; with the earl of Glencairn 
he kept up the last war for the king against Cromwell ; and his 
lady, through dearness of affection, marched with him, and lay 
out of doors with him on the mountains."! & n & when the earl 
was driven out of Scotland by Cromwell, she accompanied him 
to the continent, where, for several years, they followed the court. 
During her abode in France, " being zealous for the king's res- 
toration (for whose cause her husband had pawned and ruined his 
estate), by the earl of Lauderdale's direction, she, with Sir Rob- 

* Lamont's Diary, p. G6. " One George Fleming had a charter of Balcarres, 8th 
December, 1G33, and sasiue of Balcarres was passed in favor of Hew Hamilton, 
bailie of Edinburgh, by Oliver Cromwell, 7th March, 1655. Haigh Muniment-room." 
— Lord Lindsay's Lives of the Lindsays, vol. ii., pp. 104, 105. 

t Douglas's Peerage, vol. i.. pp. 167, 168. 

t Sylvester's Reliquiae Baxterianas, part i., p. 121. 



COUNTESS OF BALCARRES. 361 

ert Murray, got diverse letters from the pastors and others there, 
to bear witness of the king's sincerity in the protestant religion."* 

Amid all these vicissitudes in her lot, Lady Balcarres expe- 
rienced much domestic happiness. Her esteem, tenderness, and 
affection, toward the earl, were reciprocated by a corresponding 
esteem, tenderness, and affection on his part toward her. He 
knew her worth ; he reposed with much confidence in her judg- 
ment ; and the lapse of time produced not the slightest abate- 
ment of the ardor, of early affection. They were favored with 
fine children, who promised to be lovely and good like themselves, 
and the blessing of Heaven seemed to rest upon them* Baxter, 
in writing to her, speaking of God's goodness to her, in both a 
temporal and spiritual respect, says : " You may read in these sa- 
cred records of your heart, how the Angel of the covenant hath 
hitherto conducted you through this wilderness, toward the land 
of promise ; how he hath been a cloud to you in the day, and a 
pillar of fire by night ; how the Lord did number you with the 
people that are his flock, his portion, and the lot of his inheri- 
tance ; and led you about in a desert land, instructed you, and 
kept you as the apple of his eye (Deut. xxxii. 9, 10). His 
manna hath compassed your tent ; his doctrine hath dropped as 
the rain, and his words distilled as the dew ; as the small rain 
upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass (ver. 2). 
As his beloved, you have dwelt in safety by him, and the Lord 
hath covered you all the day long (chap, xxxiii. 12). When storms 
have risen, he hath been your refuge ; and when dangers com- 
passed you on every side, he hath hid you as in his pavilion, and 
his angels have pitched their tents about you, and borne you up. 
You have been fortified in troubles, and enabled comfortably to 
undergo them. In war and in peace ; in your native country 
and in foreign lands ; among your friends and among your ene- 
mies ; in court and country ; in prosperity and adversity, you 
have found that ' there is none like the God of Israel, who rideth 
upon the heaven in your help, and his excellency on the sky : 
the eternal God hath been your refuge, and underneath are the 
everlasting arms' (Deut. xxxiv. 26, 27."t 

Baxter, who thus addresses her, personally knew both her and 
her husband. The earl of Balcarres had, upon the recommen- 
dation of lord, afterward duke, Lauderdale,^ read some of the 

* Sylvester's Reliquiae Baxterianas, part i., p. 121. 

t Epistle Dedicatory prefixed to the treatise on the Mischiefs of Self-Ignorance, 
Baxter's Works, vol. ii., pp. 762-7C4. 

t Lauderdale, at first, seemed eminently religious ; was a warm presbyterian, 

and zealous for the covenant. He was detained prisoner, after the battle of Wor- 

31 



362 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

works of Baxter, Avhich, after a careful perusal, he reckoned 
among the best of uninspired theological writings. Nor did Lady 
Balcarres, who had also been induced to read them, fall short of 
her lord in the judgment she formed of their great merits ; and, 
from reading them, she had acquired a veneration for the charac- 
ter of " the Hercules of nonconformity," as Baxter is styled by 
Foster, even before she had seen him. On their becoming per- 
sonally acquainted, he was often a visitant at her residence, be- 
ing at all times welcome ; and when resident, in London, she 
ularly attended his ministry. Baxter, on the other hand, was 
much attracted by the Christian excellence of her character, and 
regarded her as one of the most eminently pious ladies of her 
day. Some of his practicable works were published at her re- 
quest ; and it is to the dedications of some of his works to her. 
and to his " History of his Life and Times," written by himself, 
that we are chiefly indebted for what we know respecting her 
during the first half of her life. In the following passage from 
the work last referred to, he informs us of the origin of his friend- 
ship with her, and pronounces a high encomium upon her Chris- 
tian excellence : "When the earl of Lauderdale, his [Lord Bal- 
carres's] near kinsman and great friend, was prisoner in Ports- 
mouth and Windsor castle, he fell into acquaintance with my 
books ; and so valued them that he read them all, and took notes 
of them, and earnestly commended them to the earl of Balcar- 
res, with the king. The earl of Balcarres met, at the first si^hf, 
Avith some passages where he thought I spoke too favorably of 
the papists, and differed from many other protestants, and so cast 
them by, and sent the reason of his distaste to the earl of Lauder- 
dale, Avho pressed him but to read one of the books over ;* which 
he did, and so read them all (as I have seen many of them marked 
Avith his hand) ; and Avas draAvn to over-value them more than 
the earl of Lauderdale. Hereupon his lady, reading them also, 
and being a Avoman of very strong love and friendship, with ex- 
traordinary entireness sAvallowed up in her husband's love, for 
the books' sake, and her husband's sake, she became a most af- 
fectionate friend to me, before she ever saw me. . . . Her 
great Avisdom, modesty, piety, and sincerity, made her accounted 

cester, in 1651, in different place?, and was released from Windsor castle just be- 
fore the restoration. In a letter to Baxter, dated " Windsor castle, December 14, 
1658,'' there is the following passage : " I wish I knew any were fit to translate 
your books; I am sure they would take hugely abroad ; and I think it were not 
amiss to begin with the ' Call to the Unconverted.' " — Quoted in Dr. Calamy's Life 
by Himself, in a footnote by the Editor, vol. i., p. 102. This sounds strangely when 
compared with Lauderdale's future character. 
* Over, that is, through. 



COUNTESS OF BALCARRES. 363 

the saint at the court. When she came over with the king, her 
extraordinary respects obliged me to be so often with her, as 
gave me acquaintance with her eminency in all the aforesaid vir- 
tues. She is of solid understanding in religion for her sex, and 
of prudence much more than ordinary; and of great integrity 
and constancy in her religion, and a great hater of hypocrisy, 
and faithful to Christ in an unfaithful world ; and she is some- 
what over-much affectionate to her friends, which hath cost her 
a great deal of sorrow in the loss of her husband, and since, of 
other special friends, and may cost her more when the rest for- 
sake her — as many in prosperity use to do those that will not 
forsake fidelity to Christ Being my constant audi- 
tor, and over-respectful friend, I had occasion for the just praises 
and acknowledgments which I have given her.'** 

Lady Balcarres had not been many years on the continent, 
when she was visited with a severe domestic affliction, in the 
death of the earl. His political opponents having, by their slan- 
ders, prejudiced the mind of Charles against him, he was, for a 
time forbidden the court ; " the grief whereof," says Baxter, " ad- 
ded to the distempers he had contracted by his warfare on the 
cold and hungry mountains, cast him into a consumption, of which 
he died."f But death did not find him unprepared. His life had 
been that of the righteous. According to a sketch of his char- 
acter, in a MS. of the period, he made " conscience of all his ac- 
tions, as if every day he was to render an account to Him that 
made him. . . He had his times of devotion three times a 
day, except some extraordinary business hindered him ; in the 
morning, from the time he was dressed until eleven o'clock, he 
read upon the Bible and divinity books, and prayed and medita- 
ted ; then at half an hour past . . till near seven; then at 
ten o'clock to eleven. "| 

During the whole of his last illness, the countess watched by 
his bedside with the most affectionate tenderness ; and, painful 
as it was to her to look upon his sufferings, she had the consola- 
tion — the highest she could have enjoyed in the circumstances 
— of witnessing the heavenly peace and joy which filled his soul 
in the prospect of eternity. On one occasion he comforted her 
in these words, "You ought to rejoice, because I may say, as 
my blessed Savior did, when he was to depart from his disciples, 
Let not your hearts be troubled, for I go to my heavenly Father ; I 
go from persecution and calumny to the company of angels, and 

* Sylvester's Reliquiae Baxterianas, part i., p. 121. t Ibid. 

t Quoted in Lord Lindsay's Lives of the Lindsays, vol. ii.» p. 107. 



364 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

spirits of just men made perfect." He added, " How sweet is 
rest to a wearied soul, and such a rest as this is that I am going 
to ! Oh blessed rest ! where we shall never cease, day nor 
night, from saying, ' Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty !' 
where Ave shall rest from sinning, but not from praising." At 
another time, Mr. Patrick Forbes* having asked him, " My lord, 
do you forgive all your enemies, that have so maliciously perse- 
cuted you ?" he replied, " Ay, ay, Mr. Forbes, long ago. I bless 
God that is not to do." On the last day of his life, the countess 
asked him, " My love, how is it with you now, have you gotten 
that measure of assurance you desired ?" He said, " All I can 
answer to you is, that I bless my Redeemer for it ! I am as full 
of joy with the assurance I have that my Redeemer is mine, and 
I am his, as my heart can hold." After some little struggling 
with death, he said to her, " My dear, I follow a good Guide, 
who will never quit me, and I will never quit him." " Hold you 
there, my dear," she replied, " for there you are safe ; he is a 
shield and buckler to them that trust in him ; he is the munition 
of rocks." He often observed that afternoon that the Lord called 
him, using these words, " Come, Lord Jesus, thou tarriest Long." 
Finding that his death was fast approaching, the countess said 
to him, " Have courage, my love ! your redemption draws near ; 
your blessed Lord is making fast ready, accompanied by his an- 
gels, to attend you to that mansion he prepared for you before 
the world was ; he will go through the valley of the shadow of 
death with you." Upon which he laid both his feeble hands 
about her neck, and, with the small strength he had, drew her into 
him, and said, " I must take my last farewell of thee, my dear- 
est!" and, after expressing the ardor of his affection for her, de- 
sired her to pray that the passage might be easy. It was re- 
markably so, indeed ; for, soon after having looked up to heaven 
and prayed, he gently breathed out his soul into the hands of the 
Savior who redeemed it. He died at Breda, on the 30th of Au- 
gust, 1659, at the early age of forty-one ;f and his body was 
brought over to Scotland, and buried in the church at Balcarres. :[ 
This nobleman, as he well deserved, obtained a high place, in 

* Mr. Patrick Forbes was the son of Mr. John Forbes, minister of Alford, who 
was banished his majesty's dominion for life, in the reign of James VI., for defend- 
ing the liberty of the presbyterian church of Scotland. Deserting his father's prin- 
ciples, he conformed to prelacy, after the Restoration, and was made bishop of 
Orkney. t Lord Lindsay's Lives of the Lindsays, vol. ii., pp. 104-110. 

$ Lamont's Diary, p. 123. " The remains of Lord Balcarres," says this writer, 
"landed at Elie, 2d December, 1C59, and some days after were carried to Balcar- 
res, and this t2th Jan. [1660], were interred at Balcarres, in the ordinary burial- 
place, with suiting solemnity." 



COUNTESS OF BALCARRES. 365 

the estimation of his country, for ability, wisdom, virtue, and 
piety. Robert Baillie describes him, as " without doubt one of 
the most brave and able gentlemen of our nation, if not the most 
able ;"* and Baxter, as " a lord of excellent learning, judgment, 
and honesty ; none being praised equally with him, for learning 
and understanding, in all Scotland. "f His zeal in the cause of 
the covenant, with the exception of his concern in " tbe engage- 
ment," is attested by Mr. Samuel Rutherford, who, as those who 
have read his letters will readily admit, was not disposed to speak 
with flattering lips to the greatest. In a letter to him, dated 
'' St. Andrews, December 24, 1649," he says, " Lord Balcarres, 
whose public deservings have been such that I esteem him to 
have been most instrumental in this work of God. I hope, my 
lord, you will pardon me to make a little exception in the matter 
of the late sinful engagement."^ Crowley wrote an elegiac 
poem upon his death ; in which he celebrates his talents, virtues, 
and piety, and deplores his premature removal ; nor does he for- 
get to commemorate the worth of the noble lady of the departed. 
The following extracts are from the concluding verses : — 

"Noble and great endeavors did he bring 
To save his country, and restore his king 
And whilst the manly half of him, which those 
Who know not love, to be the whole suppose, 
Performed all parts of virtue's life ; 

The beauteous half, his lovely wife, 
Did all his labors and his cares divide ; 
Nor was a lame nor paralytic side, 

In all tbe turns of human state ; 
In all th' unjust attacks of fate 

She bore her share and portion still, 
And would not suffer any to be ill." 

" His wisdom, justice, and his piety, 
His courage both to suffer and to die, 

His virtues, and his lady, too, 
Were things celestial." 

By this nobleman, the countess had issue, two sons, and three 
daughters: 1. Charles, second earl of Balcarres, who died in 
1662 ; 2. Colin, who, on the death of his brother Charles, be- 
came third earl of Balcarres ; 3. Lady Anne ; 4. Lady Sophia ; 
and 5. Lady Henrietta. 

The death of the earl, whom she loved so tenderly, inflicted a 
deep wound on the heart of Lady Balcarres, though she sorrow- 
ed not concerning him as those who had no hope ; and sought 

* Letters, vol iii., p. 437. t Sylvester's Reliquiae Baxterianse, part i., p. 121. 
I Rutherford's Letters, Whyte and Kennedy's edition, p. 716. This letter is pub- 
lished in that edition for the first time. 

31* 



366 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

consolation by unburdening her grief to her heavenly Father, 
trusting that, true to his promise, he would never leave nor for- 
sake her. Having resolved on bringing home his body for inter- 
ment at Balcarres, she left Breda for Scotland, accompanying, or 
following his mortal remains to their final resting-place. After 
the last sad offices of respect were performed to his mortal part, 
she started from Balcarres for London, on the 12th of July, 1660, 
taking her children along with her.* In London, where she 
stayed a considerable time, she had many opportunities of meet- 
ing with her friend, Richard Baxter, a man well qualified to ad- 
minister religious consolation to her, under the loss of the hus- 
band of her youth. But while resident in the English capital, a 
new, and an unexpected trial befell her in the conversion of her 
daughter, Lady Anne, to Roman Catholicism. Lady Anne ap- 
pears to have been a young person of high promise ; but, led 
away by the artful and insinuating persuasions of the Jesuits 
about the court (and the queen-dowager seems to have been 
privy to the business), she became enchanted with popery, and 
openly embraced it. On receiving the news of this conversion, 
Lady Balcarres was so deeply grieved as, it would appear, to 
suffer considerably in her health ;f and, anxious for the recovery 
of her daughter to the truth, she requested Dr. Gunning, after- 
ward bishop of Chichester, to endeavor to get a meeting with the 
corrupters of the young lady's faith, in order to his arguing with 
them, in her presence, against the popish doctrines. But she 
was unfortunate in the choice of her man ; Dr. Gunning, from his 
bigoted high church principles, being more fitted to confirm her 
daughter in Romanism than to convert her from it. " The coun- 
tess of Balcarres," says Baxter, " told me, that when she first 
heard of it, she desired Dr. Gunning to meet with the priest, to 
dispute with him, and try if her daughter might be recovered, 
who pretended then to be in doubt ; and that Dr. Gunning first 
began to persuade her daughter against the church of Scotland, 
which she had been bred in, as no true church, and after disputed 
about the pope's infallibility, and left her daughter worse than 
before ; and that she took it to be a strange way to deliver her 
daughter from popery, to begin with a condemnation of the re- 
formed churches as no true churches, and confess that the church 
and ministry of Rome was true.":J: She next applied to Baxter, 

* Lamont's Diary, p, 123. J Reliquiae Baxteriauaa. part i., pp. 219-229. 

t " Hearing that the countess of Balcarres was uot well, I went to visit lier, and 
found her grievously afflicted for her eldest daughter, the Lady Anne Lindsay, 
about sixteen or seventeen years of age, who was suddenly turned papist, by she 
knew not whom." — Sylvester's Reliquiae Baxterianse, part ii., p. 219. 



COUNTESS OF BALCARRES. 367 

a more suitable man, who, to promote her object, was willing to 
discuss the question of the Romish faith with any champion of 
the Romish church, in the presence of Lady Anne. But all the 
efforts of Baxter to obtain such a discussion* were without suc- 
cess ; for the perverters of the young lady's faith kept themselves 
behind the curtain, and they were, besides, sufficiently conscious 
of their inability to grapple with a man of Baxter's calibre, as 
well as too cunning to expose themselves to the risk of losing a 
convert, of whom they seem to have prided themselves not a 
little. At last they stole her away secretly from her mother, in 
a coach. A servant went after her, and overtook her in Lin- 
coln's-Inn Fields. She positively promised to the servant to 
come back, saying she went only to see a friend. But she never 
came back.f She was conveyed to France, and there placed in 
a nunnery, where, to put the most charitable construction upon 
her conduct, she possibly might expect to escape the temptations 
she would encounter in the world, and live without distraction, 
in constant meditation upon God and divine things — for that is 
the reason assigned by the Roman catholics for the unnatural 
seclusion of the cloister — but where she would be deprived of 
the opportunities of benevolent activity, which are only to be 
found by mixing with the world, and where she would meet with 
the temptations peculiar to the recluse, and peculiar to popish 
nunneries. Baxter, writing to the countess, August 25, 1661, 
when enumerating the mercies of her lot, says, " You may re- 
member .... your comfort in your hopeful issue, though abated 
by the injury of Romish theft, which stole one of the roses of 
your garden, that they might boast of the sweetness when they 
called it their own : I may well say stole it, when all the cheat 
was performed by unknown persons in the dark ; and no impor- 
tunity by you or me, could procure me one dispute or conference 
in her hearing, with any of the seducers, before her person was 
stolen away ."I Not long after her departure, Lady Anne sent a 

* These efforts are stated at length in Reliquiae Baxterianae, part ii., pp. 219, 
220, to which the reader is referred. 

t How speedily does popery pervert the mind ! " Her mother told me," says 
Baxter, "that hefore she turned papist she scarce ever heard a lie from her, and 
since then, she could believe nothing that she said." Among other instauces of her 
disregard to truth, he mentions, that "she complained to the queen-mother of her 
mother, as if she used her hardly forj-eligion, which was false ;" and yet, such are 
the delusions of popery, that, writing to her mother from Calice, in France, she 
says, " I felt no true love to God in my soul before ; but as soon as I turned papist I 
did, and have now the Spirit of God, and his image, which before I never had." 

% Baxter's Works, vol. ii., p. 761, Dedication of his "Mischiefs of Self Ignorance," 
dated August 25, 1661. Baxter sent a letter to her, the day before she was stolen 
away, dated December 1, 1660, which is inserted iu Reliquiae Baxterianae, part ii., 
pp. 219-221. 



368 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

letter to her mother, from her nunnery, dated Calice, and sub- 
scribed " Sister Anna Maria," giving the reasons why she had 
changed her religion. Her mother showed the letter to Baxter, 
and desired him to write an answer to it ; which he did, though 
he knew those in whose power she now was, " were not likely 
to suffer her to read it ;" and it was sent to her by her mother. 
It is dated January 29, 1661 ; and among other things he says, 
" We shall have leave to pray for you, though we can not have 
leave to instruct you, and God may hear us when you will not : 
which I have the more hopes of, because of the piety of your 
parents, and the prayers and tears of a tender-hearted mother, 
poured out for you, and your own well-meaning, pious disposi- 
tion." But all the means employed to recover her to the protes- 
tant faith Avere in vain. She continued to the day of her death 
in the nunnery to which she had been carried away, but the par- 
ticular year in which she died is unknown. What made the 
fate of Lady Anne the more trying to her mother was, that she 
was her favorite daughter. " This," says Baxter, " was the 
darling of that excellent, wise, religious lady, the widow of an 
excellent lord, which made the affliction great, and taught her to 
moderate her affections to all creatures."* He adds, " This per- 
version had been a long time secretly working before she knew 
of it; all which time the young lady would join in prayer with 
her mother, and jeer at popery, till she was detected, and then 
she said, she might join with them no more." 

Lady Balcarres continued in London for some months after 
the flight of her daughter to France. At length, when about to 
depart for Scotland, feeling the death of her husband still pres- 
sing heavy upon her, aggravated by the fate of her eldest daugh- 
ter, and " being deeply sensible of the loss of the company of 
those friends which she left behind her," she desired Baxter to 
preach the last sermon she was to hear from him, on these words 
of the Savior, in John xvi. 32 : " Behold, the hour cometh, yea, 
is come, that ye shall be scattered every man to his own, and 
shall leave me alone ; and yet I am not alone, because the Father 
is with me." This passage of scripture had often recurred to 
her thoughts ; and it seemed so extremely appropriate to her con- 
dition, and had proved so powerful a means of soothing her grief, 
that she was very desirous of listening to such reflections upon 
it as might suggest themselves to a man of so enlarged an under- 
standing and so matured experience as was Richard Baxter. 
With her request Baxter readily complied ; nor was she content 

* Keliquise Baxteriauae, part u., pp. 219-229. 



COUNTESS OF BALCARRES. 369 

with hearing it preached, but requested him to give her a copy 
of it in writing ; and judging it was fitted to be useful to such as 
might be placed in circumstances similar to her own, she was 
urgent with him to publish it.* 

The exact time when Lady Balcarres left London for Scotland 
is uncertain. From some statements made in Baxter's dedication 
to her of his treatise, to which reference has already been made 
(" The Mischiefs of Self-Ignorance, and the Benefits of Self-Ac- 
quaintance, opened in diverse Sermons, at Dunstan's-West ; and 
published in answer to the Accusations of some, and the Desires 
of others"), it would appear that she had left London previous to 
the 25th of August, 1661, the date of the dedication. "If one 
kingdom," says he, " do not hold us, and I should see your face 
no more on earth, yet, till Ave meet in the glorious, everlasting 
kingdom, we shall have frequent converse by such means as 
these, notwithstanding our corporal distance. And as I am as- 
sured of a room in your frequent prayers, so I hope I shall 
remain, madam, your faithful servant, and remembrancer at the 
throne of grace. "f 

Lady Balcarres had heard the sermons which compose that 
volume delivered from the pulpit ; and so eminently calculated, 
in her judgment, were they — from the importance of the subject, 
and from the judicious manner in which it was treated — to be of 
general utility, that she earnestly solicited Baxter to publish 
them to the world. His dedication commences thus : " Madam, 
though it be usual in dedications to proclaim the honor of in- 
scribed names, and though the proclaiming of yours be a work 
that none are like to be offended at that know you, they esteem- 
ing you the honor of your sex and nation ; yet, that you may see 
I intend not to displease you by any unsafe or unsavory applause, 
I shall presume to lay a double dishonor upon you : the one, by 
prefixing your name to these lean and hasty sermons ; the other, 
by laying part of the blame upon yourself, and telling the world 
that the fault is partly yours that they are published. Not only 
yours, I confess ; for had it not been for some such auditors as 
Christ had (Luke xx. 20, and Mark xiii. 13), and for the frequent 
reports of such as are mentioned, Ps. xxxv. 11,1 had not written 

* Reliquiae Baxterians, parti., p. 120. He published the sermon in the close 
of the year 1662, in his work entitled " The Divine Life," which, besides that ser- 
mon, enlarged under the title " Conversing with God in Solitude," contains two 
other treatises: the first, " Of the knowledge of God," from the text John xvii. 3; 
and the second, " Of Walking with God," from the text Gen. v. 24. To this work 
is prefixed a dedicatory epistle, addressed to the countess. 

t Baxter's Works, vol. ii., p. 761. 



370 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

down all that I delivered, and so had been incapable of so easily 
answering your desires. But it was you that was not content to 
hear them, but have invited them to recite their message more 
publicly ; as if that were like to be valued and effectual upon 
common hearts, which, through your strength of charity and holy 
appetite, is so with yours."* 

About this time, the countess was visited with severe bodily 
affliction ; on learning which, Baxter, subsequently to his writing 
the above dedication, added a " postscript,'' dated November 1 , 1 661 , 
giving expression to his sympathy ; reminding her that she had not 
to do with an enemy, but a Father ; and subscribing himself her 
" brother and companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and 
patience of Jesus Christ." 

She recovered from this illness ; but, in the following year, 
she lost her eldest son, Charles, second earl of Balcarres, a very 
promising boy of about ten or twelve years of age, who died at 
Balcarres on the 15th of October, 1662,f of a singular disease — 
a stone being found in his heart, of great magnitude !| He was 
buried in the church of Balcarres on the 21st of that month, " in 
the night-season. "|| The countess sent the stone taken from his 
heart to Lord Lauderdale, with a view to medical inspection, ac- 
companied with a letter. " I have sent your lordship," she sdys, 
" with my Lord St. Andrews,^ a poor pledge for so rich a jewel ; 
this is all I have now for my dear child, my little saint, I may 
rather say, who is now, I hope, a star of the first magnitude. O 
my sweet child ! how distressed, how sorrowful has he left me, 
with an afflicted family ! . . . . Were it not too tedious, I think I 
could have written, though not so learnedly, yet more fully, and 
that which your lordship and physicians (that, I think, will be 
astonished with the bigness of the stone, how his little heart 
could contain it) would have made use of. My lord, pray let me 

* Baxter's Works, vol. ii., p. 701. 

t The countess had returned to Balcarres in May preceding. "In May, 16G0, 
viz., the sixth dny, the said lady returned to Balcarres, her two sons having come 
some months before." — Lamont's Diary, p. 123. 

1 Reliquia? Baxterianee, part i., p. 121. " When he was opened," says Wodrow, 
" there was a stone or stony substance found in his heart, and that about two inches 
Ioiilt, which Sir Robert Murray presented to either Gresham college or some other 
public collection of curiosities. He was an excellent youth, of great parts and piety.'' 
— (Analecta, vol. i . p. 356.) Wodrow, in the same" place, says that he ' died at 
London," which is a mistake. He also asserts that " Baxter* in one of his books, 
which he dedicates to his [the child's] mother, says, ' Though he died of a stone in 
his heart, yet he had not a heart of stone !' " He evidently quotes from memory — 
the words printed in italics not being used by Baxter, though he plainly refers to 
the piety of the boy. 

|| Lamont's Diary, p. 156. $ Sharp, archbishop of St. Andrews. 



COUNTESS OF BALCARRES. 371 

know what physicians say of it, and if there could have been, 
help for it ; and whether they think he has had it from his con- 
ception, or but lately grown."* 

Shortly after the death of this child, Baxter, on hearing of the 
countess's bereavement, addressed to her a. consolatory letter, 
dated December 24, 1662. This forms the dedicatory epistle 
prefixed to his treatise entitled " The Divine Life," to which 
reference has already been made. It is chiefly employed in 
suggesting such consolatory considerations as might tend to mit- 
igate her grief under this affliction; and a portion of it may be 
quoted, both because it illustrates the train of reflection suggested 
to her mind on this occasion, and because it is well adapted to 
be useful to Christian parents, when tried, in the course of Divine 
providence, with the death of their children. " Madam," says 
he, " in hope of the fuller pardon of my delay, I now present 
you with two other treatises, besides the sermon (enlarged) which, 
at your desire, I preached at your departure hence. I knew of 
many and great afflictions which you had undergone, in the re- 
moval of your dearest friends, which made this subject seem so 
suitable and seasonable to you at that time ; but I knew not that 
God was about to make so great an addition to your trials in the 
same kind, by taking to himself the principal branch of your 
noble family (by a rare disease, the emblem of the mortal malady 
now reigning). I hope this loss also shall promote your gain, 
by keeping you nearer to your heavenly Lord, who is so jealous 
of your affections, and resolved to have them entirely to himself. 
And then you will still find that you are not alone, nor deprived 
of your dearest or most necessary friend, while the Father, the 
Son, the sanctifjdng and comforting Spirit, is with you. And it 
should not be hard to reconcile us to the disposals of so sure a 
friend. Nothing but good can come from God ; however the 
blind may miscall it, who know no good or evil but what is meas- 
ured by the private standard of their selfish interests, and that as 
judged of by sense. Eternal love, engaged by covenant to make 
us happy, will do nothing but what we shall find at last will 
terminate in that blessed end. He envied you not your son, as 
too good for you, or too great a mercy, who hath given you his 
own Son, and with him the mercy of eternal life. Corporal suf- 
ferings, with spiritual blessings, are the ordinary lot of believers 
here on earth ; as corporal prosperity, with spiritual calamity, is 
the lot of the ungodly. And, I beseech you, consider that God 
knoweth better than you or I, what an ocean your son was ready 
* Letters of Lady Margaret Burnet to the Duke of Lauderdale, p. 92. 



372 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

to launch out into, and how tempestuous and terrible it might 
have proved ; and whether the world, that he is saved from, would 
have afforded him more of safety or seduction, of comfort or ca- 
lamity — whether the protraction of the life of your noble husband, 
to have seen our sins, and their effects and consequents, would 
have afforded him greater joy or sorrow. Undoubtedly, as God 
had a better title to your husband, and children, and friends, than 
you had, so it is much better to be with him than to be with you, 
or with the best or greatest upon earth. The heavenly inhabi- 
tants fear not our fears, and feel not our afflictions. They are 
past our dangers, and out of the reach of all our enemies, and 
delivered from our pains and cares, and have the full possession 
of all those mercies which we pray and labor for. Can you 
think your children and friends, that are with Christ, are not safer 
and better than those that yet remain with you ? Do you think 
that earth is better than heaven for yourself? I take it for granted 
you can not think so, and will not say so. And if it be worse 
for you, it is worse for them. The providence which, by hast- 
ening their glorification, doth promote your sanctification, which 
helpeth them to the end, and helpeth you in the way, must needs 
be good to them and you, however it appear to flesh and unbelief. 
O madam, when our Lord hath showed us (as he will shortly 
do) what a state it is to which he bringeth the spirits of the just, 
and how he doth there entertain and use them, we shall then be 
more competent judges of all those acts of providence to which 
Ave are now so hardly reconciled ! Then we shall censure our 
censurings of these works of God, and be offended with our 
offences at them ; and call ourselves blind, unthankful sinners, 
for calling them so bad as we did in our misjudging unbelief and 
passion. "We shall not wish ourselves or friends again on earth 
among temptations and pains, and among uncharitable men, 
malicious enemies, deceitful flatterers, and untrusty friends! 
When we see that face which we long to see, and know the 
things which we long to feel, and are full of the joys which now 
we can scarce attain a taste of, and have reached the end which 
now we seek, and for which we suffer, we shall no more take it 
for a judgment to be taken from ungodly men, and from a world 
of sin, and fear, and sorrow; nor shall we envy the wicked, nor 
even desire to be partakers of their pleasures. Till then, let us 
congratulate our departed friends on the felicity which they have 
attained, and which we desire ; and let us rejoice with them that 
rejoice with Christ ; and let us prefer the least believing thought 
of the everlasting joys, before all the defiled, transitory pleasures 



COUNTESS OF ARGYLL. 373 

of the deluded, dreaming, miserable world. And let us prefer 
such converse as we can here attain with God in Christ, and 
with the heavenly society, before all the pomp and friendship of 
the world." 

The countess continued to reside for several years at Balcarres, 
watching with maternal care over the education of her only re- 
maining son, Colin, who succeeded his brother as third earl of 
Balcarres, and of her two daughters, Lady Sophia and Lady 
Henrietta. After remaining in a state of widowhood for upward 
of ten years, she was secondly married, on the 28th of January, 
1670, to Archibald, ninth earl of Argyll,* who suffered martyrdom 
in 1685, and whom she survived for above twenty years. This 
marriage had the effect of lessening, in some measure, Argyll's 
political power, by alienating from him the duke of Lauderdale, 
whose lady's niece was his first wife. Lauderdale, Tweeddale, 
and Argyll, had formerly been united in politics ; but previous to 
this marriage, a difference had arisen between Tweeddale and 
Argyll. Lauderdale, however, continued to retain his former 
kindness for Argyll, till rumors were afloat that Argyll intended 
to marry the countess of Balcarres, when Tweeddale succeeded 
in engaging Lauderdale in his quarrel, by persuading him that 
the young earl of Balcarres, their cousin and pupil, would be 
ruined by the match. Tweeddale prevailed upon Lauderdale to 
desire Argyll to leave off the contemplated marriage ; but Argyll, 
scorning to do so to please Tweeddale, the refusal inflamed 
Lauderdale.whose friendship for Argyll, after that, soon declined. f 

For nearly eleven years after the second marriage of the sub- 
ject of our notice, whom we must now call the countess of Argyll, 
her domestic happiness was undisturbed by any great domestic 
trial ; and she resided sometimes at Inverary, sometimes at Ed- 
inburgh, and sometimes at Stirling, where the earl had a house. 
When at Inverary, the principal place of her residence, she sat 
under the ministry of Mr. Patrick Campbell, who, for noncon- 
formity, had been ejected, after the restoration, from that parish, 
of the highland congregation of which he was minister, but who 
resumed his labors there in 1669, under the first indulgence, 
which was granted that year.! When at Edinburgh and at 
Stirling, and when occasionally sojourning in other places, she 

* Argyll was a widower. His first wife was Lady Mary Stuart, eldest daughter 
of James, fifth earl of Murray. She died in May, 1668. 

t Sir George Mackenzie's Memoirs of the Affairs of Scotland, pp. 179-181. 
t Wodrow's History, vol. i., p. 328 ; vol. ii., p. 133. 

32 



374 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

attended the sermons of the ejected ministers, both in private 
houses and more publicly.* 

Her two daughters, Lady Sophia and Lady Henrietta, in whom 
she found more comfort than in her daughter Lady Anne, "though 
widely different in character, the one being as gentle and retiring 
as the otber was energetic and enterprising, were united in one 
faith, one love to their Savior, their mother, and each other." 
Like-minded with their mother in regard to the persecuted pres- 
byterian church, they preferred the sermons of* the proscribed 
ministers to those of the hireling curates. Of the gentle and 
retiring Lady Henrietta, it is unnecessary here particularly to 
speak, as she will form the subject of the subsequent sketch. 
" Solitude and retirement, in which she could commune with her 
own heart and be still, had ever a peculiar charm for her. Lady 
Sophia, on the contrary, was a woman remarkable for the bright- 
est faculties, cheerful, and witty, and endowed with that presence 
of mind, in the hour of need, which is justly denominated hero- 
ism."! By her sprightliness and humor, she diffused an agree- 
able hilarity over the society in which she mingled ; and her 
jesting powers she sometimes exercised at the expense of the 
unprincipled persecutors of her day, for whom she entertained a 
just contempt. The following anecdote — relating to a visit she 
paid to Adam Blackadder (son of the famous John Blackadder), 
then only an apprentice boy to a merchant in Stirling, when, about 
the close of the year 1674, he was imprisoned in the tolbooth of 
that town for refusing to sign the bond in reference to conventi- 
cles, called " the black bond," and for being at conventicles — well 
illustrates her principles and character, though an instance only 
of sportive pleasantry, in which she indulged in the free and 
unrestrained exuberance of her youthful spirits — for she was, 
probably, at that time, not more than eighteen years of age. 
" While I was in prison," says Adam, " the earl of Argyll's two 
daughters-in-law, Lady Sophia and Lady Henrietta, and Lady 
Jean, his own daughter, did me the honor, and came to see me, 
where, I remember, Lady Sophia stood up upon a bench, and 
arraigned before her the provost of Stirling; then sentenced and 
condemned him to be hanged, for keeping me in prison : which 
highly enraged the poor fool provost,! though it was but a harm- 

* Diary of her Daughter, Lady Henrietta, Wodrow MSS., in Advocates' Libra- 
ry, vol xxxi., 8vo, No. 8. 

t Lord Lindsay's Lives of the Lindsays, vol. ii., p. 144. 

X The provost, according to Adam's account, was " a violent persecutor and ig- 
norant wretch." When, on being apprehended early in the morning by two mes- 
sengers, Adam was brought to the provost, the first words the provost (putting on 



COUNTESS OF ARGYLL. 375 

less frolic. It seems he complained to the council of it, and the 
good earl was like to be brought to much trouble about it."* 

When resident in Fife, Lady Sophia went to hear the sermons 
of Mr. John Blackadder and others, who preached very frequently 
there, both in the fields and in private houses. In Blackadder's 
Memoirs, we are informed that, on sabbath, the 11th of January, 
1674, when only about seventeen years of age, she came to hear 
that venerable minister preach at the house of Alexander Ham- 
ilton, laird of Kinkell, a man of eminent piety, liberality, and 
courage, whose house was a shelter to many of the persecuted 
ministers in their wanderings, and in which, though it was within 
a mile of St. Andrews, the seat of Archbishop Sharp, they often 
preached to great numbers, none being excluded who came to 
hear. She was, however, prevented from hearing sermon on 
that day, by one of those interruptions which conventicles at that 
time so frequently met with. The militia of St. Andrews, hurried 
out by the wife of Archbishop Sharp, a woman of a similar spirit 
with himself, came to Kinkell, with muskets, lighted matches, 
and pikes, under the command of one lieutenant Doig, with above 
a hundred of the rabble, and many of the disaffected students, 
gentlemen, and some noblemen's sons, and drew up before Kink ell- 
house gate, at some distance. They did not, however, interrupt 
Blackadder, who was delivering a lecture from Psalm ii., to a 
numerous auditory ; the long gallery and two chambers being full, 
and also a multitude in the close. But some of the ill-disposed, 
having, after the singing of the psalm at the close of the lecture, 
got into Mr. Hamilton's stable, and having taken away his horse, 
and the horses of some others, Mr. Hamilton, who had been 
standing without the gate, and looking on, observing this, struck 
with a cane at the fellow who had taken his horse ; upon which, 
some of the disaffected students from behind his back took hold 
of the cane, pulling it out of his hand, which occasioned his fall- 
ing to the ground. This was followed by an altercation between 
the friends of Mr. Hamilton and the militia ; but no serious harm 
was sustained by any of the parties. At this time, many who 
were proceeding to the meeting turned back, on hearing the 
alarm, among whom were Lady Sophia Lindsay and some com- 
pany with her, who were coming down the brae above the house 
of Kinkell. An old man, flying from the meeting, called out to 
them to stay ; and, on their inquiring what was the matter, he 

his breeches) spoke to him were, "Is not this bra' wark, Birr, that wi maun be trou- 
bled with the like of you?'' Adam answered, " You have got a bra' prize, my 
lord, that has clacht a poor prentice."— -Blackadder's Memoirs, pp. 301, 302. * Ibid. 



376 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

cried, in great terror, " A massacre, a great massacre, yonder, 
for I saw some of the best" — (meaning Mr. Hamilton) — " fall ere I 
came away, and they were stripping the women." This so af- 
fected them, that they went back to a landwart man's house. 
Meanwhile, the lieutenant, with the militia and the rabble, 
marched back to St. Andrews ; after which the people again 
convened ; and the gates being shut, and a watch set on the bat- 
tlement to observe the motions of the militia, they heard, without 
interruption, Blackadder preach a very moving sermon on these 
pathetic words in Jeremiah, xxxi. 18, "I have surely heard 
Ephraim bemoaning himself thus ; Thou hast chastised me, and 
I was chastised, as a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke : turn 
thou me, and I shall be turned ; for thou art the Lord my God." 
But Lady Sophia, and those with her, were not present at the 
sermon. Not knowing that the militia had left Kinkell, they 
sent a boy to ascertain the state of matters. The boy, on coming 
to Kinkell-house, was admitted within the gate, and allowed to 
hear with others in the close, but not suffered to go away till the 
sermon was ended. This made Lady Sophia and her company 
conclude that all was not well, and they remained where they 
were, expecting to hear distressing news. After sermon, the 
boy returned ; and, on being asked what detained him, he said 
he had been hearing a preaching, where all the folk were weep- 
ing; which yet alarmed them more, till he told them that no 
injury had been done to any one. Upon this, " Lady Sophia, 
with several in her company, came and stayed in Kinkell-house 
that night with the laird and the minister, with whom she then 
made good jest of the pitiful alarm she had got."* 

That the countess of Argyll exerted a beneficial influence in 
promoting, in the earl, both a sense of piety and the love of lib- 
erty, is undoubted. During the first eleven years of their union, 
already referred to, as well as during several previous years, he 
was connected, it is true, with the persecuting government of 
Charles II., and complied with it, to an extent which was un- 
worthy the son of the proto-martyr of the Solemn League and Cov- 
enant, and of so eminent a saint as was his mother. But, while 
this admitted — and it occasioned him afterward deep remorse, 
drawing from him free acknowledgments and deep contrition on 
the scaffold — it is, at the same time, only justice to state, that he 
rather passively yielded to the persecuting measures pursued by 
the majority of the government than gave them his cordial ap- 
probation, or actively carried them into effect. He sometimes 
* Blacltadders Memoirs, MS. copy ; see also printed edition, pp. 160-163. 



COUNTESS OF ARGYLL. 377 

shielded the presbyterian ministers from persecution. Owing to 
his protection, Argyllshire suffered less for nonconformity than 
many other counties of Scotland.* Toward the close of. his ca- 
reer, the principles of religion and civil freedom, which had been 
instilled into him in early life, asserted their claims, elevating his 
patriotism above personal considerations. And these redeeming 
traits of his character were owing, in no small degree, to the in- 
fluence exerted on his mind, by the benevolent sympathy and. 
favor for the persecuted presbyterians which distinguished his 
lady,f and her pious public-spirited daughters, by her first hus- 
band, Lady Sophia and Lady Henrietta, for both of whom he en- 
tertained a high esteem, as well as a strong and tender affection. 
During the persecution, many excellent women, as we have 
already seen in the Introduction, even when they did not suffer 
by any proceedings of the government instituted directly against 
themselves, yet suffered greatly throngh the unjust and illegal 
proceedings of the government against their husbands. About 
the close of the year 1681, the countess began to experience this 
kind of trial. After the parliament had enacted that all officers 
in church and state should take the test — an oath which, as Wod- 
row well observes, " is a medley of popery, prelacy, Erastianism, 
and self-contradiction,''^ — Argyll, on being called to take it, No- 
vember 3, 1681, as a privy councillor and one of the commission- 
ers of the treasury, though he had. in his place in parliament op- 
posed its imposition, swore it with this explanation, which he sub- 
scribed : " I take it in as far as it is consistent with itself, and with 
the protestant religion ; and I declare, that I mean not to bind up 
myself, in my station, and in a lawful way, not to wish or endeavor 
any alteration which I think to the advantage of church or state, 
not repugnant to the protestant religion and my loyalty, and this 
I understand as a part of my oath." For taking it with this ex- 
planation, he was imprisoned in the castle of Edinburgh, on the 
9th of November, prosecuted before the justiciary court, and, by 
the unanimous verdict of a jury of his peers, was found guilty 

* Letter of Mr. James Boece, minister of Campbelltown, after the revolution, to 
Wodrow, among Letters to Wodrow, vol. xi , 4to., No. 190, MSS. in Advocates' 
Library. 

t See Appendix, No. XI. 

% The parliament passed their act concerning the test, on the 31st of August, 
1G31. In taking it, the swearer, among other things, owned the ecclesiastical su- 
premacy of the monarch in its fullest extent ; condemned as unlawful, all resistance 
to the king, under any pretext, or in. any circumstances whatsoever ; and renounced 
the obligation of the National Covenant, and of the Solemn League and Covenant; 
while, at the same time, with flagrant inconsistency, he professed his adherence to the 
Scotch Confession of Faith, of 1567, which asserts that Christ is the only hea"d of 
the church. — Wodrow's History, vol. iii.. pp. 295, 297. 

32* 



378 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

of high treason, leasing-making,* and leasing-telling, but was 
acquitted of perjury by a plurality of votes. f The privy coun- 
cil, upon this verdict being given in, sent a letter to the king, 
informing him of what had been done, and desiring permission 
to give orders to the justiciary court to pronounce sentence upon 
Argyll, in conformity with the verdict ; it being the design of the 
duke of York, the prime agent in all this, to bring him to the scaf- 
fold, that the protestant party might be deprived of a head, and to 
annex his jurisdiction to the crown, and to parcel out his lands.| 
The countess was now greatly alarmed for his safety, as indeed 
there was too much cause of alarm ; and she would, in all proba- 
bility, have at this time been subjected to the trial which befell 
her in 1685, when he was beheaded at the market-cross of Ed- 
inburgh, had not her daughter by her first husband, Lady Sophia, 
been the means of enabling him to escape from the castle. 

Influenced by sympathy with her mother, as well as by affec- 
tion to the earl, and probably also impelled by the tender passion 
of love — for she was supposed to be, at this time, affianced to 
the third son|| of the earl, by his first wife, to whom she was af- 
terward married — Lady Sophia undertook to effect his escape ; 
and effected it, with singular dexterity and success, about eight 
o'clock in the evening of Tuesday, the 20th of December, 1681. § 

* Leasing-malHng was a crime — the creature of an act of parliament — which 
consisted in misrepresenting the actions of the king to any of his subjects ; or, vice 
rerun, those of the subjects to the king. It inferred capital punishment. 

t Fountainhall's Decisions, vol. i, pp. 160, 161, 166. Drummond's Memoirs of Sir 
Ewen Cameron of Locheill, pp. 206. 207. 

% Fountainhall's Decisions, vol. i , p. 166 Wodrow's History, vol. iii., p. 337. 

|| This was the honorable Charles Campbell. The date of the marriage is uncer- 
tain ; and none of their descendants in the male line exist. — Douglas's Peerage, vol. 
i., p. 105. 

§ On the 19th, the day preceding, believing that his life was in danger, the earl 
began to entertain thoughts of attempting bis escape ; and, on the morning of the 
20th, he had some intention, though no fixed resolution, of attempting it that even- 
ing, but had not then disclosed his intention to any individual. Learning, about ten 
o'clock in the forenoon, that the duke of York had absolutely refused to sutler him 
to see him till his majesty's return : and learning further, about noon, that some 
troops and a regiment of foot were come to town, and that the next day he was to 
be brought down from the castle to the common jail, from which criminals were or- 
dinarily carried to execution, he determined to attempt his escape that very night ; 
and, about five o'clock in the evening, he gave directions in reference to it, not in- 
tending to make the attempt till near ten o'clock. About seven o'clock in the even- 
ing, a fiend, -who came up from the city, dissuaded him from his purpose, alleging 
the impossibility of its succeeding, new orders having been privately given for more 
effectually securing him, the castle guards being doubled, and none suffered to go 
out without Bhowing their faces, which several ladies had already been required to 
do. But this information, by increasing his apprehension of his danger, only strength- 
ened his determination ; and, in less than an hour after, he was enabled, by the aid 
of his favorite step -daughter, to carry it into effect. These particulars are taken 
from a scarce folio, entitled, ' The Case of the Earl of Argyll, ' privately printed and 
circulated by his friends after his escape, p. 122. 



COUNTESS OF ARGYLL. 379 

Whether the plan was of her own contrivance, does not appear; 
but the manner in which she put it into execution, as related to 
Lady Anne Lindsay by her father, Earl James, Lady Sophia's 
nephew, is as follows : " Having obtained permission to pay him a 
visit of one half hour, she contrived to bring as her page, a tall, 
awkward, country clown, with a fair wig, procured for the occa- 
sion ; who had apparently been engaged in a fray, having his 
head tied up. On entering, she made them immediately change 
clothes. They did so ; and, on the expiration of the half hour, 
she, in a flood of tears, bade farewell to her supposed father, and 
walked out of the prison with the most perfect dignity, and with 
a slow pace,"* led by the gentleman who had accompanied her 
to the castle, Argyll following as her page, holding up her train. 
In passing the guards, Argyll was in no small danger of being 
discovered, the suspicions of some of them being awakened ; 
but, with singular tact, she succeeded, by an ingenious device, 
suggested on the spur of the moment, in allaying their suspicions. 
" The sentinel at the drawbridge," continues the same writer, 
" a sly highlander, eyed her father hard, but her presence of 
mind did not desert her ; she twitched her train of embroidery, 
carried in those days by the page, out of his hand, and dropping 
it in the mud, ' Varlet,' cried she, in a fury, dashing it across his 
face, ' take that — and that too,' adding a box on the ear, ' for 
knowing no better how to carry your lady's garment.' Her ill 
treatment of him, and the dirt with which she had besmeared his 
face, so confounded the sentinel, that he let them pass the draw- 
bridge unquestioned."! Having passed all the guards, she en- 
tered her coach, which was waiting for her at the outer gate ; 
while Argyll, agreeably to his assumed character, stepped on the 
hinder part of the coach ; and, on its coming opposite the Weigh 
house, he slipped off, and shifted for himself. 

The ability and success with which Lady Sophia effected the 
escape of Argyll, lifted off a load from the mind of her mother ; 
who had now the comfort of reflecting that though he was still 

* Memoirs of Lady Anne Barnard, quoted in Lord Lindsay's Lives of the Lind- 
says, vol ii., p. 147. 

t See also Fountainhall's decisions, vol. i., p. 167 ; Wodrow's History, vol. iii., p. 
337; Law's Memorials, p. 210. In " The Case of the Earl of Argyil," it is said 
(p. 122), that " within half an hour after [that is, after a friend had visited him at sev- 
en o'clock in the evening] , by God's blessing, he got safe out, questioned pretty warm- 
ly by the first sentry, but not at all by the main guard, and then, after the great gate 
was opened, and the lower guard drawn out double, to make a lane for his com- 
pany [that is, Lady Sophia, in whose train he followed], one of the guards, who 
opened the gate, took him by the arm, and viewed him. But, it pleased God, he 
was not discerned." 



380 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

exposed to the risk of apprehension before he reached Holland, 
that sanctuary of safety, he was in the meantime out. of the hands 
of his enemies ; and while her daughter became, from this heroic 
action, more endeared to her than ever, she did not forget that 
her first and highest acknowledgments were due to God, who, in 
his merciful providence, had crowned this enterprise with suc- 
cess.* Very different were the feelings of the government, who, 
on being informed of Argyll's escape, and of the manner in which 
it was brought about, were so enraged, that it was even proposed, 
in the privy council, publicly to whip the young lady through the 
streets of Edinburgh. " So gallant," says Aikman, " were the 
Scottish cavaliers!"! No punishment was, however, inflicted 
upon her at present ;J though she was afterward imprisoned sev- 
eral weeks for the noble deed. 

After his escape from the castle, Argyll, according to a previ- 
ous arrangement, met with Mr. Pringle of Torwoodlee, who con- 
ducted him in safety to Northumberland, to the house of Mr. 
William Veitch ; who, again, conducted him safely to London, 
where, and in the neighborhood, he was concealed and hospita- 
bly entertained by Mrs. Smith, the wife of a wealthy confectioner, 
and a woman of eminent piety, wisdom, liberality, and patriotism, 
till he found the means of getting safely over to Holland. It was 
when at this time sheltered in London, that he wrote a poetical 
address to Lady Sophia, his fair deliverer. It is dated London, 
April 18, 1682 ; and though it has no peculiar merit as a poetical 
composition, a part of it may be given, as interesting from the 
circumstances in which it was written. It commences thus : — 

'• Daughter, as dear as dearest child can be, 
Lady Sophia, ever dear to me ; 
Our guardian angels, doubtless, did conspire 
To make you gain, and me to give this hire, 
Not to requite — what I can never do — 
But somewhat suitable from me to you. 

" I am not rich — guineas tempt not your eyes — 
Yet here are 'angels' you will not despise. 
You came an angel in the case to me, 
Expressly sent to guide and set me free. 
The great gate opened of its own accord :|| 
That word came in my mind — I praise the Lord. 
He that restrained of old the Shechemites,§ 
I hope will now the cruel Benjamites; 
Priests that do want the pity of laymen — 
Judges and counsellors that cry, ' Amen !' 

* Diary of Lady Henrietta Campbell. t Aikman"s History, vol. iv., p. 591. 

t Foun'tainhall's Decisions, vol. i , p. 167. || On margin, Acts xii. 10. 
6 Genesis xxxv. 5. 






COUNTESS OF ARGYLL. 381 

When I was out, I knew not where I went: 

I cried to God, and he new angels sent. 

If ye desire what passed since to me, 

Read through the book of Psalms, and think on me." 

What follows are some of the concluding lines : — 

" There 's nothing meant but pride of tyranny — 
A dainty way to uniformity ! 
The triple crown, and this new, glorious head, 
May make brave work when you and I are dead. 
All is but cheat till holiness get place. 
Till gospel laws be rules, and God give grace. 
God's secret laws are not still* understood — 
The wrath of men may work the church's good ; 
What we may see is far from me to say, 
But God doeth what he will in his own way. 
Peace is not promised here, yet we may see 
Religion flourish to a great degree, 
And Zion freed from human tyranny. 
This may be here, but certainly above 
There shall be always peace and always love. 

happy place! where we shall always see 
The blessed sight, perfect felicity ! 

A place beyond our Essachosant fnr, 
Where there is always peace, and never war. 
Let you and I meet at the throne of grace 
By prayer now, till we see face to face ; 
Since as your pnge I could no longer stay, 
Pray God reward you, and himself you guide, 
And all good people wish, to you provide. 

" The noble friends I found here, greet you well ; 
How much they honor you, it 's hard to tell ; 
Or how well I am used — to say it all, 
Might make you think that I were in Whitehall ! 

1 eat, I drink, I lie, I lodge, sae we el, 
It were a folly to attempt to tell; 

So kindly cared for, furnished, attended, 

Were ye to chalk it down, you could not mend it."t 

Though the escape of the earl greatly relieved the mind of the 
countess, the unjust and illegal proceedings of the government 
against him in his absence proved to her a new cause of distress. 
The privy council having communicated the intelligence of his 
escape to the king, and at the same time desired to be informed 

* Still, that is, " yet." 

t At Inverary " there are several avenues of great beauty, one of the principal of 
which is a long avenue which leads from the castle to Essachosan. . . . There 
are also many trees worthy of notice, on account of their great size and beauty. 
There is a lime near Essachosan, called the marriage-tree, on account of the union 
of the branches, which is often visited by strangers. From a bole of considerable 
size, it throws out two principal branches, a little above the ground, which are firmly 
knit together at about twenty feet above the point of separation, by a bar or branch, 
formed of a process issuing from one, or probably from both." This extract, from 
the Statistical Account of Iuverary, Argyllshire, in the New Statistical Account of 
Scotland, will enable tlie reader to form an idea of the earl's allusion in the text. 

% Wodrow MSS., vol. ix., 8vo, No. 23. 



382 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

what measures they should take in consequence— the king, in 
reply, allows sentence of forfeiture of life and fortune to be pro- 
nounced upon him, as a traitor, but not to be executed till his 
pleasure should be further made known. On the receipt of the 
king's letter, which was on the 22d of December, the second day 
after Argyll's escape, the council gave orders to the justiciary 
court to pronounce upon him, in his absence, the above sentence. 
Learning the determination of the council, the countess presented 
a petition to the lords of justiciary, humbly supplicating that no 
sentence might be passed upon him in his absence, and support- 
ing the prayer by many strong reasons, founded both on justice 
and on the law of Scotland ; but the justiciary lords, being now 
mere tools in the hands of the privy council, disregarded her pe- 
tition, not even deigning to answer it, and pronounced sentence 
upon him in terms of the act of the privy council.* 

During the time that the earl was in Holland, the countess, it 
would appear, remained in Scotland, residing chiefly at Stirling. 
She, however, continued to correspond with him by letter ; and 
Major Holmes, whom Bishop Sprat describes as Argyll's " long 
dependant and friend, a man active in the times of Cromwell, and 
always disaffected to his majesty's government," was employed 
by Argyll in conveying his letters to her, as well as to others of 
his correspondents, and in conveying her letters to him.f 

At length, about the close of the year 1683, she was put to 
trouble, in consequence of some of the earl's letters, and of a let- 
ter which she had written to him, falling into the hands of the 
government. The Rye-House Plot had been discovered in June 
that year ; and the government having received intelligence that 
Argyll, who was still in Holland, had corresponded with the con- 
spirators, Major Holmes, to whom all Argyll's letters were ad- 
dressed, was taken into custody; and his house being searched, 
there were found in it several of Argyll's letters, written in 
ciphers, and a letter of the countess to Argyll, also written in 
ciphers, together with the key of the correspondence.^: All these 
documents were immediately sent down to Edinburgh, to the 
privy council ; who, upon receiving them, summoned the countess 
to appear at their bar. This subject, having come under their 
consideration at their meeting of the 18th of December, 1683, the 
council " remitted to the lords chancellor, treasurer, and duke of 
Hamilton, to speak with the Lady Argyll anent the deciphering 

* Wodrow's History, vol. iii , p. 340. 

t Bishop Sprat's " True Account of tbc Horrid Conspiracy," &c. p. 82. 

X Ibid. ; compared with Acts of Privy Council afterward "quoted. 



COUNTESS OF ARGYLL. 383 

of her letter to the late earl of Argyll, her husband, and to report 
to the council. These members, having gone aside and spoken 
with her, reported that she was unwilling to satisfy them in that 
matter upon oath. The council then remitted to the earl of Perth, 
the lords register and advocate, to tell her of her danger if she 
refused to do so ; and these lords having also spoken with her, 
and reported that she was willing to depone, the council remitted 
to the earl of Perth to examine her upon oath, and communicate 
the result of her examination to the lords chancellor and treasurer 
in the afternoon."* 

She was summoned again to appear before the council, at 
their meeting on the forenoon of the 20th of December ; and, 
having made her appearance, she was solemnly sworn concern- 
ing the letter above-mentioned, and made her depositions there- 
upon. The earls of Perth and Tweeddale, the president of the 
court of session, and the lord-advocate, were appointed to exam- 
ine her more particularly. Her depositions have not been regis- 
tered in the records of the proceedings of the privy council, but 
the substance of them has been preserved by Fountainhall, an 
industrious chronicler of the events of those times. She ac- 
knowledged that she had corresponded with Argyll, which, in 
strict law, was criminal for her to do, though his wife, he being 
a condemned traitor. She also owned, that the letter above re- 
ferred to was written by herself to him, but that she could not 
now deciper it, having, about four months ago, burnt the key, 
judging, upon the discovery of the English plot, such a mode of 
correspondence dangerous, and liable to suspicion. She further 
deponed, that ever since his affair with the M'Leans, about the 
Isle of Mull (the M'Leans having laid wait for his letters, to 
know his design), it was the earl's practice to write to her and 
his friends, even of his private affairs, in ciphers, but that, as 
has been said before, she had burnt the key, and could not now 
read or explain the ciphers ; but that all the letters she received 
from him contained nothing concerning the plot, and related only 
to his own private affairs, and to his friends ; " and it would be 
a very cruel law indeed," she added, " were a wife compelled to 
detect, and reveal such matters." Unsatisfied with her answers, 
which, contrary to their wishes, discovered nothing to criminate 
the earl, the committee pronounced them disingenuous ; and, ac- 
cordingly, they sent in all haste for Mr. George Campbell, in the 
Canongate, and one Gray, of Crechie, in Angus, who were 
skilled in the art of reading letters written in ciphers. Such 
* Register of Acts of Privy Council. 



334 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

Mere the proceedings of the committee of council. The con oil 
itself, at the same diet (December the 20th), "continued (he ad- 
vising the oath until their next meeting, and the earl of Balcar- 
res was desired that the lady [his mother] might be in readiness 
at any time when she should thereafter be called for."* 

The countess was again brought before the committee of the 
privy council on the 1st of January, 1684. By this time, Mr. 
Gray, of Crechie, and Mr. George Campbell, had succeeded in 
deciphering her letter to the earl,f w%h the exception of some 
capital letters with figures placed above them on the right hand ; 
as D 43 , which stood for the relatives he, his, hitn, the import of 
which they did not discover, until explained by the countess her- 
self. It does not appear, that at this meeting they read her own 
letter to her, or made her fully aware of the extent to which they 
had succeeded in deciphering it; but, ignorant that D 43 was put 
for the relative pronoun, and ignorant of the use made of another 
hieroglyphic H 7j , they supposed, and hinted to her, that, by these 
signs which occurred in her letter, her son, the earl of Balcarres, 
was intended. Finding that her son was thus in danger of being 
implicated, she said that she now remembered that D 43 , was only 
a relative particle in the key between her husband and her, and 
so meant Lord Maitland,t who Avas immediately mentioned be- 
fore. As this involved that nobleman in the charge of corre- 
sponding with, and receiving letters from Argyll, a traitor, the 
committee immediately sent for the earl of Lauderdale, Lord 
Mainland's father, and sent with him Captain Graham, and Sir 
"William Paterson, their clerk, to seal up all the papers, trunks, 
and cabinets of Lord Maitland, who was then in London, till 
they should be examined. |) 

At the meeting of the privy council on the following day (Jan- 
uary 2), the committee gave a verbal report of what they had 
done. They state, " upon information given to them, that a gen- 

* Register of Acts of Privy Council, compared with Fountainball's Decisions 
vol. i., p. 251. ' 

t We have not met with the countess's letter, but the following is the alphabet- 
ical key which opened it : — * 

abcdefghiklmnopqrs t u w x v z & 

1st 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 3'- 33 34 

2d 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 

3d 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 9" 93 94 

Carstairs' State Papers, p. 106. As a specimen of this mode of correspondence be- 
tween her and the earl, see a short letter which he wrote her in the middle aloha- 
bet, in Appendix, No. XII. v 

X Richard, Lord Maitland, eldest son of Charles, third earl of Lauderdale (for- 
merly Lord Hatton, brother to the famous dake of Lauderdalei, was married to 
Lady Anne Campbell, second daughter of the earl of Argyll. 

|| Fountainball's Decisions, vol. L, p. 256; compared with Register of Acts of 
Privy Council. 



COUNTESS OF ARGYLL. 385 

tleman in Mearns, named Gray, of Crechie, by rules of art, 

[is] able to unfold ciphering ; by their order, the letter in ciphers 
found at Major Holmes' house at London, and the key, sent down 
with some other papers — which letter is by the countess of Ar- 
gyll acknowledged to be a letter from her to her husband — were 
delivered to him, who, having considered thereof [deciphered 
the letter], except some letters placed, as it seems, for monosyl- 
lables, or names of persons, whereby the import of the whole 
letter is fully discovered." They further state, that in conse- 
quence of the explanation which the countess had given of cer- 
tain letters with figures placed above them, being put for mono- 
syllables, or relative particles, whereby Lord Maitland seemed 
implicated in the crime of corresponding with Argyll, a con- 
demned traitor, " they have yesternight given order to Sir Wil- 
liam Paterson, clerk to the council, and Captain Patrick Gra- 
ham, to go to the earl of Lauderdale's house, and to secure all 
the papers belonging to the Lord Maitland, and to examine all 
the servants upon oath, as to the Lord Maitland's cabinets, boxes, 
and coffers, where any of his writes were, and that none of them 
were abstracted ; and to seal and secure the same, and the doors 
and windows, that none might enter the room where they were." 
They further inform the council, " that Sir William Paterson and 
Captain Graham had, conform to the said order, gone to the earl 
of Lauderdale's house, and called for the keys of the rooms 
where any of the Lord Maitland's papers were, or suspected to 
be, and examined the haill servants of the house, as to their 
knowledge of any other papers belonging to him, or if the same 
were abstracted ; and that thereafter they had sealed the boxes 
and coffers wherein they were informed to be, and the doors and 
windows of the chamber where they left them, and produced the 
keys thereof before the committee ; as, also, that, by their order, 
they had gone to the countess of Argyll, and given her an account 
of the deciphering of the said letter, and what they had observed 
therein, that she might not be surprised, but might recollect her- 
self for clearing her oath." In fine, they state that they had 
" found it necessary to write a letter to the secretaries, with the 
said deciphered letter, for his majesty's information." " And 
the said deciphered letter, with the committee's order to Sir 
William Paterson and Captain Graham, and the account of the 
obedience given by them thereto, being read, and considered by 
the lords of council, they approved thereof, as necessary and 
good service done to his majesty."* 

* Register of Acts of Privy Council, 
33 



386 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

Such was the stir created by a letter which the countess 
wrote to her husband. No criminating disclosures of any mo- 
ment, it would appear, were made against Lord Maitland, if we 
may judge by the silence preserved on the subject in the records 
of the subsequent proceedings of the privy council. The coun- 
tess, also, as it would seem, was no further annoyed in this mat- 
ter, it being manifest, that whatever might be discovered of Ar- 
gyll's intrigues with those concerned in the Rye-House Plot, it 
was to be discovered from his correspondence with others, and 
not with her ; and, accordingly, the government specially ad- 
dressed itself, and ultimately with success, to the task of unravel- 
ling the letters of Argyll to other parties, found in the possession 
of Major Holmes. 

In the summer of 1685, being informed of the sickness of her 
daughter, Lady Henrietta (then the wife of Sir Duncan Camp- 
bell, of Auchinbreck), who was residing at the castle of Carnas- 
sary, in the parish of Kilmartin, Argyllshire, the countess went 
to visit her, and, upon her recovery, brought her along with her 
other daughter, Lady Sophia, who had been residing some 
weeks with her sister, at the castle of Carnassary, to Stirling, to 
live with her there for some time.* Lady Henrietta had a strong 
affection for her mother, and bears a high testimony to her Chris- 
tian worth. " Her tender care and affection," says she, " have 
been greatly evidenced to all hers, and particularly to myself, 
which I desire to have a deeper sense of than can be expressed, 
as my bounden duty ; and I can not but reckon it among the 
greatest earthly blessings to have been so trysted, having early 
lost my dear father, eminent in his day, when insensible of the 
stroke, and whose memory has much of a lasting savoriness 
among those of worth that knew him ; and when so young not 
two years old, and deprived of his fatherly instruction it may 
justly be ground of acknowledgment that the blessed Father of 
the fatherless, on whose care I was left, did preserve so tender- 
hearted a mother, whose worth and exemplariness, in many re- 
spects maybe witness against us, if undutiful or unthankful to the 
great Giver of our mercies. "f 

Hitherto, the countess had suffered by the forfeiture of the es- 
tates of the earl, and by his long banishment. Now, she was to 
suffer by being personally imprisoned, and still more severely by 
the tragical fate of her husband. The earl, who, for some years, 
had been living on the continent, and who had, on the death of 
Charles II., resolved upon his unfortunate expedition of rescuing 
* Diary of Lady Henrietta Campbell. t Ibid. 



COUNTESS OF ARGYLL. 387 

his country from popery and slavery, set sail for Scotland on the 
1st of May, 1685, with three ships, and a considerable number 
of arms, but with few men, not exceeding three hundred in all. 
In three days he reached Orkney, and touched there — a great 
error ; for thus his motions were made known to the bishop of 
Orkney, who immediately communicated the intelligence to the 
privy council. Two of Argyll's friends, Mr. William Spence, 
his secretary, and Dr. William Blackadder, son of Mr. John 
Blackadder, having gone ashore at Kirkwall, were also seized 
by order of the bishop, who refused to surrender them ; upon 
which Argyll seized and carried off five or six of the Orkney 
people as prisoners. From Orkney he steered his course, by 
the inside of the Western Isles, for Islay ; thence he sailed to 
Mull ; thence to Kintyre ; and, on arriving at Tarbet, published 
his declaration to his clan ; but, being joined by fewer in the 
highlands than he had anticipated, and meeting with various 
disasters, he at last found it necessary, in order to secure his 
personal safety, to disguise himself under the dress of a country- 
man. Riding in disguise on horseback, he was attacked, on the 
17th of June, by two of the militia, who were also on horseback, 
at the water of Inchinan. They laid hold on him, one on each 
side, all the three being on horseback ; and the earl grappling 
with them both, one of them fell with him to the ground. His 
lordship got up, and kept both at bay by presenting his pocket- 
pistols ; and he would have made his escape, had not some come 
to the aid of the two militia. A weaver there being awakened by 
the noise, came out with a rusty broad-sword, and struck Argyll 
on the head ; which so stunned him that he fell into the water, 
and in the fall cried out, " Ah ! unfortunate Argyll." On know- 
ing who he was, they seemed not a little grieved ; and would 
have let him go, had not the terror of being punished by the gov- 
ernment prevented them. He was brought in prisoner to Glas- 
gow, and thence to Edinburgh, on the 20th of June, 1685, under 
a strong guard. He lingered so long by the way that it was 
near ten o'clock at night before he arrived at the Watergate. On 
his arrival there, be was met by Captain Graham's guards, who 
were appointed to conduct him to the castle ; and his hands 
being tied behind his back by the hangman, he walked on foot, 
bareheaded, to the castle, the hangman going before him. • But, 
from the lateness of the evening, few were spectators of his ig- 
nominious treatment. 

Though the countess of Argyll had no share whatever in this 
insurrection, yet the privy council, on receiving intelligence that 



333 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

the earl had touched at Orkney, immediately issued orders that 
she should be apprehended, and imprisoned in the castle of Stir- 
ling — that town being, at that time, the place of her residence. 
After being confined there a short time, she was conducted, on a 
sabbath morning, May the 10th, to Edinburgh, and on Monday 
secured a prisoner in the castle, where she was confined for five 
or six weeks.* This step Avas altogether unexpected on her 
part ; nor is it easy to see what important object the government 
could gain by making her a prisoner. She was in no danger of 
taking up arms and joining the standard of the earl, like bis son 
James, and his brother, Lord Neil ; who, with many of the most 
substantial of the name of Campbell, that they might be prevented 
from joining him, were seized and made close prisoners. But 
arbitrary and despotic governments have often wreaked their ven- 
geance on the innocent and helpless relatives of such as have 
risen up against their tyranny and oppression ; and, in the pres- 
ent instance, they had at least the plea that the countess, by cor- 
responding with the earl after he had been denounced a traitor, 
had rendered herself obnoxious to punishment. They, besides, 
seem to have intended this as a retaliation upon the earl for his 
taking five or six of the Orkney people prisoners. " His lady," 
says Fountainhall, " and my Lord Neil, his brother, and his son 
James, were secured prisoners in Edinburgh ; and they were 
threatened, that, as he used the Orkney prisoners, so should they 
be used."t 

The countess's daughter, Lady Sophia, was, at the same time, 
imprisoned in the tolbooth of Edinburgh, for an old offence (for her 
concern in Argyll's escape from the castle in 1681), for which, 
though threatened at the time, she had never before been pun- 
ished. Lady Sophia continued prisoner during the same period 
as her mother .| It was fortunate for her, unprincipled and ty- 

* Diary of Lady Henrietta Campbell; Fountainhall's Decisions, vol. i., p. 362; 
an 1 Ins Historical Observes, p. 189. 

t Fountainhall's Historical Observes, p. 167. 

X Meanwhile, her husband, the Honorable Charles Campbell, narrowly escaped 
an ignominious death. He had accompanied his father from Holland, on his expe- 
dition to Scotland ; and being twice sent ashore on the coast of Argyllshire — at one 
time to bring intelligence of the disposition of the gentlemen and common people, 
and the second time to levy men — he fell sick of a fever when sent ashore this second 
time, and was taken by the marquis of Atholl, who, by virtue of his justiciary power, 
resolved to hang him at bis father's gate at Inverary. "But," says Fountainhall, 
" the privy council, by the intercession of sundry ladies (for it was said he was mar- 
ried to Lady Sophia Lindsay, Balcarres's sister, who conveyed his father, in Decem- 
ber, 1681, oat of Edinburgh castle), stopped it (July 16, 1685), and sent for him to be 
brought prisoner to Edinburgh." On the 21st of August, he was forfeited, and ban- 
ished for life. In 1689, his forfeiture was rescinded. — Fountainhall's Decisions, vol. 
L, p. 367 ; Douglas's Peerage, vol. i., p. 105. 



COUNTESS OF ARGYLL. 389 

raimical as were the men who then ruled in Scotland, that none 
of them equalled in brutal, or rather diabolical cruelty, Jeffreys, 
the chief-justice of England (a man after James VII .'s own heart), 
who presided at the western assizes after the suppression of 
Monmouth's insurrection ;' else she would assuredly have been 
condemned, without mercy, to atone for her heroic deed by being 
burnt alive ; or, if any favor had been granted her, it would have 
been only the poor favor of being first strangled, and then thrown 
into the fire and consumed to ashes ! Such was the fate to which, 
by the sentence of that infamous man, one Mrs. Gaunt was sub- 
jected, at Tyburn, for assisting one of Monmouth's insurgents in 
making his escape, and for giving him money ; which was just 
a case similar to that of the share which Lady Sophia Lindsay 
had in the escape of Argyll from the castle of Edinburgh.* 

On learning, after she had been imprisoned ten days in the 
castle of Edinburgh, that the earl had been apprehended, and 
was also a prisoner in the castle, the countess was in great 
affliction. Her fears respecting his fate caused her more dis- 
tress than her own personal sufferings ; for she was fully per- 
suaded, and upon too good grounds, that he would now fall a vic- 
tim to the rage of his enemies. In these circumstances, she was 
extremely anxious to be admitted to an interview with him ; but 
so cruel was the privy council, that this was not granted till a 
week after his imprisonment in the castle, and three days before 
his execution. The cruelty of this she deeply felt, but she sought 
and found support and comfort in God. Her daughter, Lady 
Henrietta, who, on being informed, though incorrectly, that her 
own husband, Sir Duncan Campbell of Auchinbreck, was appre- 
hended, had gone to Edinburgh to learn his fate, says, concern- 
ing her mother, after learning for certain that he had escaped : 
" I was then more enabled to make inquiry after my dear afflicted 
mother, who was harshly treated, and seeing her under so great 
affliction, by the approaching suffering of such an endeared hus- 
band, and [that she] had no access to him till eight days after 
this fatal stroke ; this did again renew a very mournful prospect 
of matters, which at this time had a very strange aspect, so that 
if the Lord of life had not supported, we had sunk under the 
trouble."! 

The countess was admitted to see the earl, for the first time, 
on the evening of Saturday, the 27th of June. He was now 
bound in irons — a precaution taken, from the moment he was im- 

* Fountainh all's Historical Observes, p. 222. 
t Diary of Lady Henrietta Campbell. 

33* 



390 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

prisoned in the castle, to prevent his making a second escape ; 
and just before she entered, he had received information that a 
letter had arrived that evening, from the king to the privy coun- 
cil, ordering them to bring him to condign punishment within 
three days after the letter came to their hands ; but, amid all that 
was distressing in the interview, it was comforting to her to find 
that his mind was in a state of calm submission to the Divine 
will, and of humble trust in God for supporting grace under his 
sufferings.* Instead of being brought to a new trial, he was, on 
the 29th of June, condemned, by the lords justiciary, to be pub- 
licly beheaded at the cross of Edinburgh on the following day, in 
pursuance of the sentence formerly pronounced upon him, in his 
absence, for high-treason. f 

On the forenoon of the day on which he was executed, the 
countess was again admitted to see him before he died ; and 
who, but such as have been placed in similar circumstances, can 
conceive the agonizing feelings which agitated their bosoms, at 
this their last interview ! Scenes like this are so deeply affect- 
ing, that even jailers, who have been accustomed to scenes of 
suffering, have been unable to witness them without being moved 
to tears. There was, however, in the present case, every alle- 
viating circumstance which Christian character and Christian 
consolation could afford. Though he was soon to die, and the 
penalty could not be avoided, he had done nothing of which she 
had reason to be ashamed, or for which he deserved death at the 
hands of men. Though, when admitted by the jailer into his 
cell, she found him loaded with chains, she found him not abject 
and crushed in spirit by remorse, but enjoying the tranquillity of 
conscious innocence, and that peace of God which the world can 
neither give nor take away ; and this greatly sustained and soothed 
her mind. " The day being appointed for his suffering," says 
her daughter Lady Henrietta, " she had access to him, and though 
under deep distress, was encouraged by seeing the bounty and 
graciousness of the Lord to him, in enabling him, with great cour- 
age and patience, to undergo what he was to meet with, the Lord 
helping him to much fervency in supplication, and nearness in 
pouring out his heart with enlargedness of affection, contrition, 
and resignation, which did strangely fortify and embolden him to 
maintain his integrity before his merciless enemies ; and by this 
he was helped at times to great cheerfulness, and fortified un- 
der his trial, and the testimony he was to give of his zeal and 

* Wodrow's History, vol. iv., p. 298. 

t DranimoiHl's Memoirs of Sir Kwen Campbell of Locheill, p. 216. 



COUNTESS OF ARGYLL. 391 

favor to that righteous cause he was honored to suffer for."* 
On the morning of the day on which he was executed, "he 
spoke freely of the joy with which the Lord had blessed him du- 
ring the time he had been in Holland (that, as he observed, being 
the sweetest time of his life), and of the mercifulness of his es- 
cape to that end ; but rejoiced more in that complete escape he 
was to have that day from sin and sorrow ; and yet in a little he 
fell into some damp,"f and found the last interview, and espe- 
cially the final parting with his countess, a severe trial to his for- 
titude ; nor was it a less severe trial to hers. They indeed felt 
it to be the greatest trial they had to undergo. " In parting with 
my mother," says Lady Henrietta, " he was observed to have 
more concern than in any circumstance formerly ; and it was to 
her a bitter parting, to be taken from him whom she loved so 
dearly."^ After their final adieu, and when she was removed 
from his cell, " he recovered a little ; and as the time of his death 
drew near, which was some hours after, the Lord was pleased 
wonderfully to shine on him, to the dispelling of clouds and fears, 
and to the admitting him to a more clear and evident persuasion 
of his blessed favor, and the certainty of his being so soon 
happy."]j 

The last memorial of the earl's affectionate remembrance of 
her, which the countess received, was the following letter, which 
he wrote to her from the " Laigh Council-House," whither he 
was brought a short time before his execution. It is brief, for 
then his time was short and precious ; and is as follows : — 

" Dear Heart : As God is of himself unchangeable, so he 
hath been always good and gracious to me, and no place alters 
it ; only I acknowledge I am sometimes less capable of a due 
sense of it ; but now, above all my life, I thank God I am sensi- 

* Diary of Lady Henrietta Campbell. t Ibid. 

t Ibid. The final parting between that illustrious patriot, Lord William Russell, 
who was condemned to be executed for the Rye-House Plot, and his lady, who had 
an uncommon affection for him, was, in like manner, felt by them to be the most 
trying scene through which they had to pass. A few days before his execution, 
when Lady Russell left his apartment, he observed that " the parting with her was 
the greatest thing he had to do, for he feared she would hardly be able to bear it." 
But both of them were enabled on that occasion wonderfully to control their emo- 
tions, and to display great magnanimity of spirit. '' With a deep and noble silence 
— with a long and fixed look, in which respect and affection, unmingled with pas- 
sion, were expressed" — the}' took their last farewell of each other; "be great in 
this last act of his life, she greater. His eyes followed her while she quitted the 
room ; and when he lost sight of her, turning to Dr. Burnet, who attended him as 
his chaplain, he said, ' The bitterness of death is now past.' " — Sir John Dalrymple's 
Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland, vol. i., pp. 31, 32. 

|| Diary of Lady Henrietta Campbell. 



392 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

ble of his presence with me, with great assurance of his favor, 
through Jesus Christ, and I doubt not it will continue till I be in 
glory. 

" Forgive me all my faults ; and now comfort thyself in him, 
in whom only true comfort is to be found. The Lord be with 
thee, bless thee, and comfort thee, my dearest ! Adieu, my dear ! 
Thy faithful and loving husband, " Argyll."* 

This letter had a very consoling effect upon the mind of the 
countess. It had been her earnest prayer, that God would im- 
part to the earl supporting grace to the last, and prepare him for 
a happy eternity. Her prayers were heard ; and great as was 
her mental anguish, her heart was filled with gratitude to God, 
who had enabled him to display the faith and the heroism of the 
martyr. " The certainty of his being so soon happy," says her 
daughter, Lady Henrietta, " of which he expressed his sense, in 
his last letter to my dear mother, could not but sweeten her lot in 
her greatest sorrow, and was ground of greatest thankfulness, that 
the Lord helped him to the last, to carry with such magnanimity, 
resolution, contentment of mind, and true valor, under this dark- 
like providence, to endless blessedness. And though the loss 
of so great a protestant was grief of mind to all that had any ten- 
der heart, and to friends, was a universal, inexpressible, break- 
ing-like dispensation, yet in so far as he was enabled, under 
cruel suffering, to such tranquillity, peace, and comfort, this was 
to them ground of praise, and an answer to their prayers. "f 

The countess's two daughters by her first husband, Lady 
Sophia and Lady Henrietta, also received each of them a letter 
from the earl. Both these letters are without date, but they were 
probably written in the " Laigh Council-House," at the same 
time when he wrote his last letter to his countess. For his let- 
ter to Henrietta, the reader is referred to our sketch of the life 
of that lady. The letter which Lady Sophia received from him, 
bears testimony, like that which he wrote to her mother, to the 
heavenly joy which filled his soul in the near prospect of death. 
It is as follows : — 

" My Dear Lady Sophia : What shall I say in this great day 
of the Lord, wherein, in the midst of a cloud, I find a fair sun- 
shine. I can wish no more for you, but that the Lord, may com- 
fort you, and shine upon you, as he doth upon me, and give you 
that same sense of his love in staying in the world, as I have in 
going out of it. Adieu! "Argyll." 

* Wodrow's History, vol. iv., p. 303. t Diary of Lady Henrietta Campbell. 



COUNTESS OF ARGYLL. 393 

" P. S. My blessing to dear Earl Balcarres. The Lord touch 
his heart, and incline him to his fear !"* 

According to his sentence, Argyll was beheaded on the after- 
noon of the 30th of June. His behavior on the scaffold is par- 
ticularly narrated by Wodrow. It has been said, that he was 
somewhat appalled at the sight of the maiden, and that he there- 
fore caused bind the napkin upon his face, ere he approached it, 
and was then led to it.f It is, however, admitted by all, that he 
met death with much Christian fortitude. Among other things 
he said on the scaffold, " I die not only a protestant, but with a 
heart-hatred of popery, prelacy, and all superstition whatsoever." 
His last words, which he repeated three times as he lay with his 
head on the maiden, were, " Lord Jesus, receive me into thy 
glory." It is a remarkable fact, that, as is recorded by Fountain- 
hall, after his head had been struck off, his body, by the great 
commotion and agitation of the animal and vital spirits, started 
upright to his feet, till it was held down, and the blood, from the 
jugular veins of the neck, sprung most briskly, like a cascade or 
jet of water 4 " Thus fell," adds the same writer, " that tall 
and mighty cedar in our Lebanon, the last of an ancient and hon- 
orable family. "|| 

In the month of August, after the execution of the earl, the 
countess, accompanied by her daughter, Lady Henrietta, to 
London, with the design of assisting her in her intercessions 
with the government, in behalf of her husband, Sir Duncan Camp- 
bell, of Auchinbreck, who had been involved in Argyll's insurrec- 
tion, and had taken refuge in Holland. She remained in Lon- 
don with her daughter, in prosecution of this object, for about 
seven or eight months ; after which, all their efforts proving un- 
successful, she returned to Scotland ; while her daughter, in 
March or April, 1686, embarked for Holland, to join her husband. 
On her return to Scotland, she resided during the summer of that 
year at Stirling. § 

Of the subsequent history of the countess, little is known. 

■* Wodrow's History, vol. iv., p. 303. 

t Fountainhall's Historical Observes, p. 194. t Ibid. 

|| The following scene, which occurred at the execution of Argyll, as described by 
Fountainhall, may be quoted, as illustrating the manners of that period, "it was 
reported," says he, •' when Argyll's corpse were carrying otF the scaffold, a -woman 
of the popish religion followed the bearers, with railing, and wished she could wash 
her hands in his heart blood ; some other women, hearing this, it did so far provoke 
their choler, that they seized on her, and dragged her to a close foot, near the North 
loch side, and there beat her soundly, and tore her clothes, and robbed her of her 
crucifix and beads." — Historical Observes, p. 197. 

§ Diary of Lady Henrietta Campbell. 



394 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

We meet with an allusion to her in a letter addressed by Sir 
James Stewart, lord-advocate of Scotland, to Mr. William Car- 
stairs, dated "Edinburgh, September 14, 1697." The passage 
relates to her anxiety about her son, Colin, third earl of Bal car- 
res, who had become obnoxious to the government of King Wil- 
liam, in consequence of his concern in the plot of Sir James 
Montgomery, of Skelmorly, to restore King James.* " I also 
acquainted you," says the lord-advocate, " how I was ordered to 
prosecute the process of treason, remitted by the parliament 1695, 
to the justice court, which was not my inclination at this time ; 
but now that I move in it, it much alarms the lady Skelmorly for 
her husband's memory. . . . The countess of Argyll is also 
much troubled for her son, Balcarres ; she says it will waken his 
creditors, and mar her daughters' marriages. I told her that her 
son, if he pleased, might now apply to the king, at the Hague.'*! 
Colin walked on foot to the Hague, and solicited the friendly of- 
fices of Carstairs ; who told Iving William that a man he had 
once favored^ was now in so low a condition, that he had footed 
it from Utrecht that morning, to desire him speak for him. " If 
that be the case," said the generous William, " let him go home ; 
he has suffered enough." The earl " accordingly returned to 
Scotland," says Lord Lindsay, " toward the end of 1700, after 
ten years' exile ; and his mother had thus the happiness of once 
more embracing him before her death. "|| " On his being permit- 
ted to return from exile," says the same writer, " she was still 
living at Stirling; she even survived in 1706, but of the precise 
period of her death I am ignorant. Few lots in life have been 
so chequered as hers ; and few, doubtless, ever laid down their 
head on the pillow of death with more heartfelt satisfaction. 
During a long and active life, she had but few gleams of unalloyed 
earthly happiness ; and it was well for her that her hopes were 
anchored on another and a better world, ' where the wicked cease 
from troubling, and the weary are at rest.' "^ 

* This plot was discovered in 1690 ; upon which, the earl of Balcarres left the 
country. He waited on the abdicated monarch at St. Germains, who received him 
with great affection. He published, in 1714, a small work, entitled, " An Account 
of the Affairs of Scotland relating to the Revolution, 1688." On the breaking out 
of the rebellion, in 1715, he joined the Pretender's standard ; but, through the clem- 
ency of the government, he escaped unpunished. He died in 1722, aged about sev- 
enty. — Douglas's Peerasre, vol. i., pp. 169-171. 

t Carstairs' State Papers, p. 343. t See Appendix, No. XIII. 

|! Lives of the Lindsays, vol. ii., p. 190. 

§ Lives of the Lindsays, vol. ii., pp. 119-155. For extracts from a very interest- 
ing and able letter which the countess wrote to her 6on Colin, earl of Balcarres, see 
Appendix, No. XUI. 



LADY CAMPBELL OF AUCHINBRECK. 395 

HENRIETTA LINDSAY, 

LADY CAMPBELL OF AUCHINBRECK.* 

Henrietta Lindsay was the third and youngest daughter of 
Alexander, first earl of Balcarres, by his wife, Lady Anne Mac- 
kenzie, the subject of the preceding sketch. She was born about 
the close of the year 1657, or early in the year 1658 ; as appears 
from a statement made in her diary, that at the time of her fa- 
ther's death, which took place in August, 1659, she was not two 
years old.f At so early an age, she could not remember her 
father, much less derive profit from his instructions and example. 
But in her eminently pious mother, she found an affectionate and 
well-qualified instructress in the things of God ; as well as a 
constant pattern of the most attractive features of the Christian 
character. Nor was this great privilege lost upon her. From 
the exemplary piety of some female servants in the family, she 
also derived much religious advantage in her tender years. She 
mentions that this was the means of first stirring her up to aim, 
in some serious manner, at the duty of prayer, which, at times, 
was made sweet to her ; and from the experience of her younger 
days, she makes the following very judicious and important ob- 
servation : " It can not but be recommended, that care ought to 
be taken to have well-inclined and conscientious servants, of an 
agreeable temper about young ones." 

When only a little past thirteen years of age, she made a pub- 
lic profession of Christ at the Lord's table, at Weems. In our 

* The materials of this sketch, unless when otherwise indicated by the references 
at the foot of the page, are taken from Lady Campbell's diary, a copy of which is 
among the Wodrow MSS , in the Advocates' Library, vol. xxxi., 8vo., No. 8. This 
copy was written out by Wodrow himself, from the original, which he received from 
Mr. John Anderson, minister of Kirkmaiden, who received it from Lady Campbell 
herself. Mr. Anderson, in a letter to Wodrow, dated Kirkmaiden, October 24, 
1721, says : " I have Lady Henrietta Campbell's diary, written with her own hand, 
and carried down to her arrival at Edinburgh, anno 1689. She was pleased to com- 
pliment me with it the last time I parted with her, having a double of it for herself. 
The whole of it concerns her own exercises, from ber early conversion and expe- 
rience of the work of grace, to that time. J have seldom read anything more edi- 
fying ; and, therefore, could wish to see what further accounts she has left of her last 
sickness, and could have hopes of getting the same from her son, Sir James, if I were 
at his house." — Letters to Wodrow, vol. xv., No. 78. And, in a letter to Wodrow, 
in January, 1722, he says, in a postscript, " Since I wrote the above, I received 
yours, dated January 1st, and shall some time send you Lady Henrietta's diary, or, 
at least bring it with me, about the end of April, or beginning of May. I design to 
take two weeks about Glasgow before I go to the assembly." — Ibid., vol. xv., No. 81. 

t See p. 386. 



396 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

day, a child of this age is seldom admitted to so solemn an ordi- 
nance ; but such early admissions were by no meaus rare in the 
best days of the church of Scotland. Henrietta was, however, 
far from being satisfied with the manner in which she made this, 
her first approach, to the table of the Lord. She acknowledges 
that there yet " remained in her great ignorance, and estranged- 
ness from the life and power of Christianity, save by faint wishes, 
which prompted her to some formal going about duties," and to 
this duty among others ; that, as she afterward discovered, she 
had presumed upon it " from great rashness, and, no doubt, igno- 
rance of the hazard of such an adventure ;" and that, " therefore, 
no sensible benefit could be discovered; which, after some months, 
was made cause of dread and terror to her." These convictions 
of her having profaned the sacrament of the Lord's supper, were 
first produced on her mind at Inverary, under the ministry of Mr. 
Patrick Campbell, when in consequence of the marriage of her 
mother to the earl of Argyll, she was brought to reside at the cas- 
tle of Inverary, the seat of that nobleman. The sermons she 
there heard Mr. Campbell preach, had an awakening effect upon 
her, " which," says she, writing after his death, which took place 
subsequently to the revolution, " will ever endear his memory to 
me." She also records that, at this time, a weekly catechetical 
exercise in the family of the earl of Argyll, conducted by Mr. 
Cumming, a man " of eminent piety and learning," was made 
greatly useful to her, issuing in her greater liking to spiritual 
concerns. Brought by these means, to a conviction of the dan- 
ger of her natural state, she was led to renounce her own righ- 
teousness as insufficient to form the ground of her justification 
before God, and to seek salvation only in the finished work of 
the blessed Mediator. It, indeed, appears to have been her own 
impression, that it was only now that she became the subject of 
the regenerating and saving grace of the Spirit of God. Going 
with the earl of Argyll's family to Kintyre, where they stayed a 
month or five weeks, she had " access to her sweet and power- 
ful truths at Campbeltown, under Mr. Cameron's and Mr. Keith's 
ministry,* who were two eminent lights there." During this 
time, her young heart was drawn forth in ardent love to her Sa- 

■ Mr. John Cameron was, at the restoration, minister of Kilfinnan, from which he 
was ejected for nonconformity, and, in 1672, he was appointed, in the indulgence 
of the privy council of September that year, indulged minister of that parish. From 
the statement in the text, it would appear ihat he had been subsequently appointed 
indulged minister of Campbeltown. Mr. Edward Keith was, at the restoration, 
minister of Lochead, from which he was also ejected for nonconformity. He was 
appointed, in 1672, indulged minister of Campbeltown. — Wcdrov/'a History, vol. i., 
p. 328 ; and voL ii., p. 204. 



LADY CAMPBELL OF AUCHINBRECK. 397 

vior, and she was much engaged in the secret exercises of reli- 
gion, in which she found great delight. 

After this she was brought, with Argyll's family, to Edinburgh. 
While residing in the capital, she had an opportunity of hearing 
the ejected ministers preach in private houses ; and the powerful 
impression which their sermons made upon her own heart, as 
well as the blessed effects they produced upon many others who 
heard them, created in her mind an esteem for these excellent 
men, which she found it impossible to feel for the curates, whose 
ministry was attended with little evidence of the presence and 
power of God. Such was the contemplative character of her 
mind, that even then, though only in the fifteenth or sixteenth 
year of her age, she had reasoned herself into the impropriety, 
if not the sinfulness, of hearing the curates ; not only because of 
the cold and unimpressive character of their discourses, but also, 
because she believed that, by the Solemn League and Covenant, 
Britain was solemnly engaged against prelacy. She thus writes : 
" After this Ave were brought to Edinburgh ; where, after several 
months of ups and downs as to comfort, there was access unex- 
pectedly to gospel ordinances in. private families, that proved not 
empty cisterns to me, but were made as the conduit to derive 
streams from the fountain ; for which, O to be helped to praise ! 
and, though a time of persecution, yet the Lord favored his peo- 
ple there with several powerful sermons, in these private meet- 
ings, which did engage, to great esteem and affection, to these 
his sent servants, who were peculiarly countenanced, beyond 
what I could perceive among others of a different persuasion. 
This was a privilege Mr. Cumming was instrumental in procur- 
ing. Learning then to lay to heart the misery our nation was 
groaning under, by being reduced to formal, lifeless teachers 
that then were in our churches, and by the silencing our more 
faithful ministers, that were removed to corners, it became, from 
this time, matter of bitterness to me to hear any other than them ; 
having the deep impression of the ties our nation was under to 
have abolished this woful, episcopal, tyrannical power, that had 
so sad effects." 

Personal dedication to God, in a written form, in which the 
person gives himself, or herself, up to be the Lord's alone, and 
for ever, is an exercise which has often been engaged in by the 
pious young, in the youthful ardor of their religious feelings ; 
and though, if performed in a self-righteous spirit, it may be the 
means of fostering dangerous delusion, yet, if performed evan- 
gelically, in the way of the person's renouncing all dependence 
34 



393 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

on his own righteousness and strength, trusting to Christ's right- 
eousness alone for salvation, and to God's grace for strength to 
perform the engagements come under, it may, and has often been, 
highly profitable to him, both at the time and afterward, encour- 
aging him to cleave to God and his service in difficulties, in peril, 
and even in death. So much was the heart of this young lady 
drawn out to God, under the sermons of the ejected ministers, 
that she resolved, by a solemn transaction of this nature, to make 
an entire surrender of herself to Him ; and, upon her going to 
the country, where her greater seclusion afforded her more con- 
venience for such an exercise, she engaged in it with peculiar 
solemnity. " But," says she, " in these corners there was such 
sweetness found in the preached word out of the mouths of his 
sent servants (as Mr. Gilbert Hall, that shining light, and Mr. 
George Johnston), as did lead me to a further solicitude how to 
close with these great gospel offers, the publication of a Savior 
to undone sinners being then made sweet ; so that I proposed, if 
the Lord should give opportunity, that 1 should essay that indis- 
pensable duty of covenanting ; which, accordingly, I did in the 
sixteenth year of my age, when brought to the country, at Bal- 
carres,* where I enjoyed more of solitude in a retired lot." The 
covenant which she had written out, and subscribed with her 
own hand, has not been preserved ; but her whole account of the 
transaction breathes a spirit strictly evangelical, as well as devout. 
She declares that she was much countenanced in that work, in 
the Lord's enabling her to improve the glad tidings of salvation, 
without which she felt herself to be a lost sinner. She also 
testifies, that this solemn dedication was the means of her attain- 
ing " great settledness and serenity of mind ;" and that then she 
was " taken up more than usually in the exercises of delight and 
praise to the renowned name of Him Avho is the blessed rose of 
Sharon, and lily of the valleys ; which made those retirements 
from a vain world sweet to her for some weeks after." She 
adds, " The singing of Psalm xlv. was frequently made sweet to 
me, in those retired walks in Balcarres planting." 

After this she resided for a time at Stirling ; and she adverts 
to several private meetings for sermon, at which she was pres- 
ent — some of them in the night, because of the persecution — by 
which she was strengthened and edified. 

Her early scruples about hearing the curates continuing to in- 
crease, she very soon altogether withdrew from attending their 

* That is, at Balcarres house, the seat of her brother, the earl of Balcarres, iu the 
parish of Kilconquhar, Fifeshire. 



LADY CAMPBELL OF AUCHINBRECK. 399 

ministry; and, though frowned upon for this by some in high 
places, she had the moral courage to act in conformity with her 
deliberate convictions of duty, in spite of censures and sneers, 
and enjoyed the inward satisfaction which always accompanies 
fidelity to conscience. " Being again," says she, " some time 
after this, brought to Edinburgh, it was found greatly afflicting 
to attend on these time-serving formal sermons, which then were 
authorized by authority, and became matter of bitterness, and 
was such a grievance as did necessarily oblige me to withdraw 
from frequenting them, both at Stirling and at Edinburgh ; and 
though ill-looked upon by some then in power, for being scrupu- 
lous about this, yet there was more peace in this, from consider- 
ations that were considerable to a mind that was solicitous anent 
clearness." 

Lady Henrietta had been early admitted to the Lord's supper, 
and though she afterward believed that she was then an unworthy 
partaker, yet this neither cast her into despair, nor led her to 
neglect the observance of this ordinance in future, but rather 
served to excite her to diligence in seeking after the qualifications 
of a worthy communicant. Numerous evidences occur in her 
diary, of the high veneration with which she contemplated that 
sacred institution, and of the spiritual comfort and profit she had 
derived from its observance. In that document, a particular ac- 
count is given of not less than twenty of these solemn occasions,* 
at which she was a communicant. About this time she went to 
Cambusnethan, where Mr. William Violant, whom she describes 
as " that shining light," was indulged minister, to observe the 
Lord's supper, though the distance was great from Balcarres, to 
which she had removed some time before, and she stayed in the 
house of Sir Thomas Stewart of Coltness, where she met with 
much kindness, from both friends and strangers. 

From Cambusnethan she returned to Edinburgh, where, for a 
season, through the violence of the persecution, she had no op- 
portunity of hearing the gospel preached. She felt her " silent 
sabbaths very bitter," though the secret exercises of religion 
were very comforting to her ; and she again set apart some time 
for renewing her former transaction of self-dedication to be the 
Lord's, " which Bethel-day was made among the sweetest she 
ever had on earth." At length, in private houses, she frequently 
enjoyed " sweet gospel days, notwithstanding the severities en- 

* These are one at Weems, one at Pittenweem, one at Tillicoultry, one at Pais- 
ley, one at Cambusnethan, one at Killallan, one at Dirleton, three at Campbeltown, 
one at London, one atDelf. and eight at Rotterdam. 



400 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

joined ;" and at these meetings, " which were wonderfully hedged 
and protected from that avenging persecution," Mr. Alexander 
Moncrieff and Mr. John Carstairs, " those great and shining 
lights, were helped marvellously to deliver great truths," and en- 
abled to display " great boldness of spirit, and resolution in the 
discharge of their Master's work." 

About this time she went to the sacrament of the Lord's Sup- 
per, at Dirleton, and, returning home, she fell into a languishing 
condition of body ; but, on her removal to Balcarres, she gradu- 
ally recovered. When previously residing at Balcarres, she had 
attended the curate of the parish, " whose ministry was a heavy 
burden in the place ;" but now, more true to her convictions, she 
altogether absented herself; and yet, on this account, offensive 
as her conduct might be to the curate, neither her friends nor 
strangers frowned upon her. Returning to Inverary, she regu- 
larly heard Mr. Patrick Campbell preach once every sabbath, 
and also derived much spiritual profit from the fellowship and 
example of some experienced Christians in the parish. She 
records that, about this time, Mr. Alexander Wedderburn, " that 
eminent shining light," paid a visit to Inverary, and remained 
several weeks, during which time his ministry was accompanied 
with much evidence of the power and presence of God. Shortly 
after, she and several of her friends, went to the sacrament of 
the Lord's Supper at Killallan,* of which Mr. James Hutchison 
was indulged minister; and, on the close of this occasion, she 
spent some weeks with the marchioness of Argyll, at her resi- 
dence at Roseneath, where, for several sabbaths, she had the 
pleasure of listening to the pastoral instructions of Mr. Neil Gil- 
lies, indulged minister in that place. 

Leaving the marchioness of Argyll, she returned to Inverary, 
and was soon after united in marriage to Sir Duncan Campbell, 
fourth baronet of Auchinbreck, who was descended from the 
same stock as the earl of Argyll, to whom he was only second 
in the county of Argyll. He succeeded his uncle, Sir Dugald, 
who died without issue, soon after the restoration of Charles II. f 
After her marriage she went to dwell at the residence of Sir 
Duncan, at Lochgair, a mansion of great size, but which was 
cast to the ground when the property went to other hands.f 

* Killallan and Houstoun form a united parish, now generally called Houstoun. 

t Douglas's Baronage of Scotland, p. 62. 

t New Statistical Account of Scotland, Kilmichacl-Glassary, Argyllshire, p 68 1. 
The Campbell of Auchinbreck family held their baron bailie courts at Kilmicbael, 
then a populous village, and a place of considerable importance, not only to the par- 
ish, but also in the county. 



LADY CAMPBELL OF AUCHINBRECK. 401 

Here she found her lot " abundantly creditable," and also very- 
comfortable, meeting with " much fond affection and kindness," 
both from Sir Duncan and from his relations ; " which," says 
she, " with all dutiful affection, will be ever remembered with 
the greatest gratitude." The only want she appears to have felt 
in this remote locality, was her deprivation of the preaching of 
the gospel, " these bounds being then as a heath in the wilder- 
ness, as to the means of grace ;" for the minister of the parish, 
like too many of the intruded curates, was a corrupt, insignificant 
teacher. On some occasions, however, though rarely, by rea- 
son of the persecution, she received visits from nonconforming 
ministers, by whose society and instruction she was greatly re- 
freshed. 

Previous to her confinement, she went to Edinburgh, where, on 
the 30th of January, her son, James, a child whom she devoted 
to God from the womb, and who afterward succeeded his father, 
was born. Some weeks after, she and Sir Duncan, with their 
child, returned to Lochgair ; and, notwithstanding the severity 
with which the persecution then raged, they enjoyed much tran- 
quillity during the most of that year. At this time, the earl of 
Argyll .paying them a visit, invited them to come and stay with 
him for a few months, at the castle of Inverary. They readily 
accepted his invitation, and took along with them their infant 
boy, who was there " nursed with his grandmother with the 
greatest affection and tenderness." 

In July, she and Sir Duncan, with their child, went to Kin- 
tyre, with the most of the earl of Argyll's and her mother's fami- 
lies, forming a numerous company. Their society was exceed- 
ingly agreeable, and they had an opportunity of attending at the 
dispensation of the Lord's supper in that place, on two sabbaths 
in succession.* All of them, but especially Lady Campbell and 
her mother, were much interested in the services of these solemn 
occasions ; " which," says Lady Campbell, writing after the 
revolution, " were made a double meal to many ; and, indeed, as 
this meal was doubled to many, so many had a long jour- 
ney to go in the strength of it, as was sweetly forewarned, and 
with great utterance and liveliness was told us. I never saw 
such a sight of young communicants, or more seriousness, the 
seeds whereof, it is hoped, do remain in that place, that is 
blessed again with a powerful signalizing ministry." She adds, 

* Mr. David Simpson was indulged minister at Kintyre, in 1672. He was eject- 
ed from his ministry at Southend, alter the Restoration, for nonconformity. — Wod- 
row's History, vol. i., p. 328 ; and vol. ii., p. 204, 
34* 



402 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

" These two eminent lights soon after were put out, by the re- 
moval of Mr. Cameron and Mr. Keith, as a sad presage to the 
place and to our nation ; as, indeed, appeared immediately after, 
by the growing desolation and trouble that daily increased ; to 
the putting a further restraint on ministers and people, many of 
whom were imprisoned, harassed, chased to the hazard of their 
lives, the violating of the consciences of others, and the fearful 
bloodshed of many ; retrenching our liberties, so that it was 
made a crime to meet, or convene to the worship of the living 
God, except in such a manner as our nation was solemnly sworn 
against ; laying bonds on ministers not to preach, or people to 
hear, under such and such penalties, fines, hazards, as were end- 
less to rehearse ; things running to such a height, to the intro- 
ducing of popery itself, if the Lord had not prevented, that there 
were almost no thinking persons but were under the dread and 
fear of this approaching judgment. Thus, for several years, was 
this growing speat of persecution groaned under by many fami- 
lies and persons, which, when called to mind, can not but excite 
to wonder, bearing witness to this cruel bondage, much like to 
the case of those in Psalm lxvi. 12, ' Thou hast caused men to 
ride over our heads ; Ave went through fire and through water ; 
but thou broughtest us out into a wealthy place ;' for which, oh to 
be helped to go to thy house with burnt-offerings, that each of us 
to pay those vows which our lips have uttered and our mouths 
have spoken when we were in this trouble !" 

Lady Campbell's attachment to the cause of nonconformity, as 
might be expected, created her opposition, remote as was the 
part of the country where she resided ; for in the most remote 
localities there were always some individuals — the curates, if no 
others — who made it their business to discover such as were 
hostile to prelacy, and to entail on them the penalties of perse- 
cution. In the year 1684, an attempt was made, owing to the 
malignity or cupidity of base informers, to banish the worship of 
God from her house ; as appears from her gratefully speaking of 
the Lord's " mercifully hiding her as in a pavilion, even from the 
strife of tongues, and his never-to-be-forgotten mercy under the 
adversaries' bold attack to turn the worship of God out of her 
family." From this general statement, the particular circum- 
stances of the case can only be guessed at. As it was then per- 
fectly legal for the master of a family to assemble his own -do- 
mestics for reading the Scriptures and for prayer, Sir Duncan — 
had the government been regulated by their own laws, which, 
however, was not always the case — could not have been found 



LADY CAMPBELL OF AUCHINBRECK. 403 

fault with, and punished for performing those duties himself. It 
may, therefore, be supposed, that he retained in his family a 
presbyterian chaplain, whose duty it was to lead the devotions at 
the domestic altar ; and that the government being informed of this, 
Sir Duncan was threatened with prosecution, or actually prose- 
cuted on that ground. The result she does not declare ; but, as 
an evidence of their firmness of purpose, it may be mentioned, 
that, when the case was pending, and occasioning them no small 
anxiety, they cordially welcomed into their house at Lochgair, 
an ejected minister, who unexpectedly paid them a visit, though 
such hospitality was then in no small degree perilous ; and they, 
moreover, during his stay with them, though at the risk of heavy 
penalties, gladly converted their house into a little sanctuary, 
where their domestics and neighbors assembled to hear the words 
of eternal life at his mouth. " But," says she, " while thus under 
unaccountable thoughtfulness about the event, and great trouble, 
the Lord directed one of his faithful and chosen servants unex- 
pectedly to our family, the Rev. Mr. Robert Muir, eminent in 
his day ; and though the time was difficulting, yet Sir Duncan 
was moved to favor and welcome him, and would not part with 
him for some weeks ; which was made a seasonable refreshing 
visit to some. These lectures, and family exercise and sermons, 
were made often as light from the dead, not only instructing to 
the great conviction of severals, but were made strengthening 
and comforting to others ; and though several did meet together 
during his being with us, yet never did the least troiible follow, 
save to part again, which was not easy to many." Mr. Muir, as 
we shall see in the sequel, had afterward an opportunity of re- 
paying the kindness he at this time received from Lady Camp- 
bell and Sir Duncan, when his hosts were brought into circum- 
stances of distress. 

In the winter following — that is, about the close of the year 
1684, or the beginning of the year 1685 — Sir Duncan being un- 
justly and maliciously accused of uttering expressions reflecting 
on the government, for which he was in danger of prosecution, 
she proceeded along with him to Edinburgh, through a great fall 
of snow, with the design, it would appear, of leaving the country ; 
but, on reaching the capital, they were happily relieved from this 
threatened trouble ; and, staying there for some, weeks, they had 
opportunity, though but seldom, of hearing the gospel preached 
by some of the nonconforming ministers. At this time, Charles II. 
died ; an event which, severe as the persecution had been under 
his reign, excited, from the well-known cruelty and bigotry of his 



404 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

brother James, who succeeded him, the most alarming apprehen- 
sions in regard to the future. " In which time," says she, " King 
Charles's death fell out, which ushered in great agitation in the 
minds of many, who did foresee and fear what indeed did follow ; 
matters being screwed to such a height, as protestants could not 
but be greatly alarmed ; which unquestionably gave rise to the 
late earl of Argyll's project from Holland, the Lord seeing it 
meet to move the heart of severals to bestir themselves in behalf 
of their religion and liberty, when so largely run down ; as did 
evidently appear by the scaffolding, dragooning, torturing, and 
barbarous practices among us, so that either our ruin or relief 
seemed to be at hand." 

The summer after this, she and Sir Duncan were residing at 
Carnassary castle,* which stood on an eminence, at the head of 
the valley of Kilmartin, anciently called Strathmore, and the 
ruins of which are still to be seen. While residing here, she 
enjoyed for some weeks the society of her " desirable sister," 
Lady Sophia. At the same time she was attacked by a high 
fever, and in her sickness was visited by her mother, who, on 
her recovery, prevailed with her to accompany her and Lady 
Sophia to Stirling, and live there with her and her sister till her 
health should be more fully recruited. 

During the time of her stay with her mother at Stirling, tidings 
came to the government that the earl of Argyll had touched at 
Orkney ; upon which, as has already been recorded, her " dear 
mother" was, by an order of the privy council, immediately ap- 
prehended, and carried prisoner to Stirling castle, and thence, on 
a sabbath morning, to the castle of Edinburgh. Her " dear sis- 
ter," Lady Sophia, was also imprisoned; and many of the most 
substantial of the Campbell name were seized and made close 
prisoners in the Canongate tolbooth. Some days after, Sir Dun- 
can, on receiving intelligence of the earl's coming to Campbel- 
town, and the need he had of aid, willing to hazard his all to 
promote the design of this undertaking, went, through manifold 
difficulties, and even at the peril of his life, to join him, with a 
considerable number of his men,f who, however, continued not 

* Carnassary castle was the residence of Mr. John Carsewell, when, after the 
Reformation from popery, he became superintendent of Artr\l) ; and after his death, 
which took place in the year 1575, it became the property "and occasional residence 
of the Campbells of Auchinbreck. — New Statistical Account of Scotland. Kilmar- 
tin. Argyllshire, pp. 555, 556. 

t Wodrow sa^s eight hundred. — (History, vol. iv.. p. 290.) Fountainhall says 
two hundred. " Sir Duncan Campbell of Auchinbreck," says he, " with two hun- 
dred men, went to him, under the pretence he was bound by his charter to assist 



LADY CAMPBELL OF AUCHINBRECK. 405 

long together ; for they were " scattered," says Lady Campbell, 
" to the unaccountable grief and sadness of many, who were 
breathing for a deliverance." 

With much bitterness of spirit she took leave of Sir Duncan 
at Stirling, when he was about to join Argyll, for she dreaded 
the result ; nor was she altogether satisfied as to the expediency 
of the undertaking, though the laudableness of the object pre- 
vented her from making any opposition. " A time," says she, 
" not to be forgotten was this, and what this parting was when 
he left me at Stirling. And though it became me not to be so 
selfish as to stand in the way of a more public concern, Avhen so 
much seemed to be at the stake, yet I was far from encouraging 
him in it, because I had not that clearness in it that could have 
been wished. The seen danger he was exposed to at this time 
was as the bereaving me of my life, so much was it bound up in 
him ; but the Lord was graciously pleased to support, so that some 
of those days were more wonderful, and any time spent alone 
was more than ordinarily countenanced, and these loneliest times 
were made sweeter than could have been expected, although un- 
der the prospect of heavy times to follow." She continues: 
" The following day, we had the unaccountable, sad, and dismal 
notice of the ruin of that undertaking, wherein the expectations 
of many were sadly defeated ; but the Lord's time was not come 
for our deliverance, and that which did greatly aggravate the ter- 
ribleness of that stroke was the dreadful aspect these circum- 
stances appeared to have, not possible to relate, sufferings of va- 
rious kinds being from all airths expected, and an increase of our 
thraldom greatly dreaded." 

On the subsequent day, at St. Ninians, she passed, in deep 
disguise, through several guards, in order to obtain more certain 
intelligence respecting her nearest friends ; and learning that 
they were in danger, she was greatly distressed. She watched 
during the greater part of that night, and returned at four o'clock 
in the morning to Stirling ; where, on being informed that Sir 
Duncan was on the road, her fears regarding his safety were 
heightened. Taking leave that day of her " dear Jamie," whom 
" the Lord provided friends to care for," though she left him very 
destitute, having no relative to whom she could intrust him (her 
mother and sister being at this time prisoners), she, Avith much 
confusion and agitation of mind, set out for Edinburgh, walking 
and riding alternately. When some miles on her journey, being 

him ; which can Dot oblige him against the kiDg, nor defend him for treason." — De- 
cisions, vol. i., p 363. 



406 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

then on foot, she unexpectedly met, near Falkirk, the earl of 
Argyll, who was brought that length prisoner on his way to Ed- 
inburgh ; " which," says she, " was a mournful sight to one who 
bore him so great affection." He does not, however, appear to 
have observed her. She was in deep disguise, and did not ven- 
ture to come near him, but held up in the rear, at some distance, 
most part of the way, till the horse on which she was riding 
failed. Judging it more than probable that Sir Duncan was 
taken, and being informed by several persons on the road that 
such was the case, she was greatly troubled. But the report 
of his apprehension was unfounded ; for, though searched for 
in several places, he was wonderfully preserved from falling into 
the hands of his enemies — a mercy " which, on many accounts, 
she desired to remember, with great thankfulness and praise." 

Before reaching Edinburgh, she was under the necessity of 
staying all night on the road, and had some difficulty in getting 
lodgings. Owing to the fatigue of travelling, and to great heavi- 
ness and pressure of mind, arising from her own personal con- 
cerns, from the calamities of various kinds which had befallen 
or were about to befall many who were concerned in Argyll's 
attempt, and from fears respecting her husband, of whose safety 
she was ignorant, sleep departed from her eyes ; but, as the Lord 
had commanded his loving-kindness in the daytime, so in the 
night of trouble his song was with her, and her prayer unto the 
God of her life, " who made this among the sweetest nights that 
ever she had, or durst have expected, so that sleep was neither 
missed nor sought after." 

Next morning, coming early to Edinburgh, at the opening of 
the gates, she received the afflicting news of the barbarous treat- 
ment the " dear earl" of Argyll had. met with in his being brought 
to the castle ; and also heard very painful rumors regarding sev- 
eral of her nearest relations, which again plunged her in distress. 
When revolving in her mind where to go, she was directed to 
the lodgings of " a dear, sympathizing friend, Mr. Robert Muir," 
with whom she " found much favor and kind reception, and whose 
company, on this afflicting sabbath, was no small blessing to her ; 
and what was I," she adds, " that the Lord should thus regard 
me, that in most of my greatest troubles he hath been pleased to 
favor me with his people's society and company ? but he is gra- 
cious, and his compassions fail not." Ever since Mr. Muir had 
stayed some weeks with her and Sir Duncan at their house at 
Lochgair, " his instructions, singular sympathy, and affectionate 
help," had been of great advantage to them both ; " and there- 



LADY CAMPBELL OF AUCHINBRECK. 407 

fore," says she, " I hope and enjoin that it may not be forgot by 
such of mine as may outlive this acknowledgment ; but above 
all," she adds (for her pious spirit led her to see the hand of God 
in everything), " is to be acknowledged the wonderful compas- 
sion of the high and lofty One, in thus compassionating the exi- 
gencies of the indigent, and ' therefore I will be glad and rejoice 
in thy mercy ; for thou hast considered my trouble ; thou hast 
known my soul in adversities,' Ps. xxxi. 7." 

On the following day, she had certain information of Sir Dun- 
can's " safety, and marvellous preservation," which greatly re- 
lieved her burdened mind concerning him ; and she was then in 
better case to make inquiry after her " dear afflicted mother, who 
was harshly treated," and who was greatly afflicted in prospect 
of the cruel death of her husband, the earl of Argyll. 

Lady Campbell and the earl of Argyll entertained a high es- 
teem and warm affection for each other. By the Christian ex- 
cellence of her character she had gained upon his heart, and he 
always treated her with kindness, as if she had been his own 
child. She, on the other hand, cherished toward him the ten- 
derness of a daughter. This, as well as sympathy with her 
mother, made his death a sore stroke to her. On the morning 
of the day on which he was executed, she obtained an interview 
with him, though not till he was brought to the council-house. 
When admitted to him, she was greatly comforted in witnessing 
his composed, edifying carriage, in circumstances so trying to 
human fortitude. After endearing expressions, he said to her, 
" We must not part like those not to meet again." And she tes- 
tifies that he went thence to the place of execution " with the 
greatest assurance." As a last memorial of his affectionate re- 
membrance of her, he wrote to her a letter on the last day of his 
life, and it was probably written in the council-house, immedi- 
ately after this interview between them, at the same time that he 
wrote a letter to her sister Lady Sophia and another to her mother. 
It is as follows : — 

"June 30, 1685. 

" Dear Lady Henrietta : I pray God sanctify and bless 
this lot to you. Our concerns are strangely mixed ; the Lord 
look on them ; I know all shall turn to good to them that fear 
God, and hope in his mercy. So I know you do, and that you 
may still do it more and more is my wish for you. The Lord com- 
fort you ! — I am, your loving father and servant, Argyll."* 

* Wodrow's History, vol. iv., p. 304. Some person had taken a copy of this letter 
at the time, and by this means it was preserved. Mr. John Anderson, minister of 



408 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

To the sorrow of Lady Campbell, occasioned by the execution 
of Argyll, and the condition of her mother, was added the sor- 
row occasioned by the cruel manner in which many of the Camp- 
bell clan were treated, the close imprisonment of her sister, and 
the rapine and violence committed upon Sir Duncan's property, 
and that of his friends and tenants. " At this melancholy time," 
says she, " account came of many of our folks, that were taken 
and brought in like slaves, so as many prisons were filled ; others 
spoiled of all that they had, who had been in jail all this time, and 
no way in arms ; their houses rifled, and young ones put to flight. 
Many were harassed, and twenty-three gentlemen and feuars 
were executed in one day, by that' bloody person* who gave or- 
ders for it. My dear sister was close prisoner, so as none of us 
had access to her; our whole bounds and interest laid waste ; 
many put to flight ; our house burned,t and many put to great 
hardships, as were unaccountable to relate ; Sir Duncan's uncle 
[Alexander Campbell of] Strondour, slain at our gate, and [Dugald 
Mactavish of] Duardary, executed at Bowdrau.ffht.j Yet," & she 
adds, " O the graciousness of the Lord, who gave a back for the 
burden, as is wonderful at in looking back on it ; as also on the 
bounty and goodness of the Lord, in the safety of so many in the 
same circumstances, who were designed to" be a sacrifice, but 
were miraculously preserved." 

A\ hile, as is stated in the above extract, the castle of Carnas- 
sary was burned by the enemy, and Burned, too, in violation of a 
solemn treaty, her other and chief place of residence, Lochgair 
house, was, with the like perfidy, plundered of all its furniture. 
Sir Duncan's friends defended that house against the marquis of 
Atholl's men for some time ; but at length they entered into a 

Kirknjaiden, in a letter to Wodrow, dated November 6, 1723, speaking of Wodrow's 
History, says: " I was mnch surprised when I read the earl of Argyll's letter to my 
Lady Henrietta Campbell, seeing she had often told me she had' lost it lon<* ago- 
bur. it seems, some person had got a copy of it, from whom you have had it.'— Let- 
ters to Wodrow. MSS. in Advocates' Librarv, vol. xxi., 4to, No. 133. 

* The marquis of Atholl. The whole territory of the Campbells was intrusted 
to him, when the earl of Argyll fell a sacrifice ; and amon? other acts of cruelty 
and lawless violence which he committed, he caused to be executed four or five gen- 
tlemen of the name of Campbell, after they had received quarter and protection 
upon their surrendering, and eighteen more at Inverarv, without even the formality 
ol a trial. A small, bat chaste monument of chlorite, erected on the spot, close to 
the church, commemorates their tragical death, and, with great moderation of lan- 
guage, the cause in which they fell.— Wodrow's History, vol. iv., p. 310 ; and New 
Statistical Account of Scotland, Inverary, Argyllshire. 

t Viz , the castle of Inverary. 

t This account is confirmed by " a petition of Sir Duncan Campbell, for himself 
and his distressed friends, tenants, and vassals, in Knapdale, Glassary, and Kelis- 
lait," presented to the estates of parliament, after the revolution.— See Appendix, 
.No. XIV. 



LADY CAMPBELL OF AUCHINBRECK. 409 

treaty with them, and surrendered it upon condition that all the 
furniture, papers, &c, should be preserved, and that they should 
be allowed to convey them safe to Lady Campbell. But this 
treaty proved a frail security. Too perfidious to be bound by 
their own engagements, Atholl's men garrisoned the house and 
plundered it. The commander of the party, after having taken 
away and destroyed most of what was in the house, coveting the 
charter-chest, which was of a very curious construction, broke 
it open, and turned out the papers on the floor of the chamber 
where it stood, sending away the chest for his own use. After 
this reckless spoliation a party of soldiers lay in the house about 
eight or ten weeks. It is a singular fact, that after the revolution, 
when Lady Campbell and Sir Duncan returned from Holland, they 
found these papers lying on that chamber floor, exactly in the same 
state as when turned out of the charter-chest, though they had 
then lain exposed nearly four years, the house being in ruins, and 
open to everybody. On coming home, as the mansion at Lochgair 
was uninhabitable, they dwelt for some time in another house ; in 
which they had not been long, when Lady Campbell wished to 
go and see their house at Lochgair, and desired Sir Duncan to 
send some person to look for his papers. He answered, that he 
was certain that they were all destroyed ; but going up herself 
to see the condition of the house, she found them all lying in a 
heap on the floor, and caused them to be put up in several trunks 
and carried to Edinburgh, where, on examination, it was found 
that not one paper of value was amissing.* 

After the execution of the earl of Argyll, she experienced, for 
some weeks, much mental anxiety, from the great danger to which 
Sir Duncan was exposed, of falling into the hands of his ene- 
mies. By a proclamation, dated June 24, 1685, for apprehend- 
ing the leading men who had been concerned in Argyll's attempt, 
a reward of eighteen hundred merks was offered to such as 
should deliver up Sir Duncan, dead or alive, to the government ; 
and it was declared treason to harbor, reset, or correspond with 
him, or any of the persons named in the proclamation.! But, at 
the risk of incurring the penalties of treason, some had the gen- 
erosity to shelter and harbor him ; and this Lady Campbell 
piously attributes to the mercy of God, who had inclined their 
hearts to compassion. 

In such a state of matters, she and Sir Duncan resolved to 
leave Scotland. While he should go to Holland for shelter, she 

* Wodrow's Analecta, vol. i., pp. 280-282 ; and his History, vol. iv., p. 310. 
t Wodrow's History, vol. iv., p. 312. 
35 



410 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

was to go to England, with the view, if possible, of obtaining, 
from his majesty, the favor of an act of indemnity, securing at 
once his life and his estates, over both which a deed of forfeiture 
was impending. His purpose of making his escape, Sir Dun- 
can was enabled speedily to carry into effect. He arrived safely 
in Holland, on the 14th of August. Meanwhile, having left her 
child behind her, Lady Campbell and her mother, who determined 
to accompany her to England, proceeded on their journey ; in 
which they met with several instances of providential preserva- 
tion, which, with thankfulness, she desired to remember, though 
the relation of them is omitted in her diary. Many were the 
conflicting feelings which agitated her mind, in the trying cir- 
cumstances in which she was now placed ; but, like the king of 
Israel, she always had recourse to God's Word in the time of her 
affliction, and that was the source whence her comfort was de- 
rived. " After this," says she, " being on the road to England, 
at Durham, on the 9th of August [1685], being the sabbath, and 
among strangers, and at a distance from those wished-for ordi- 
nances that had been enjoyed, when alone, and full of sadness 
and anxiety, O how sweet was that word made, and powerfully 
intimated to me with bowels of compassion — Rom. viii. 35, 
' Neither tribulation, nor distress, nor persecution, nor famine, 
nakedness, nor peril, nor sword, shall separate us from the love 
of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord !' " 

Reaching London in safety, she continued there for several 
months ; and during that period, which she calls " an afflictive 
time to both nations, as may be memorable to after-ages," she and 
her mother left no means untried to obtain indemnity for Sir 
Duncan. But from King James — the consummation of tyranny, 
bigotry, and cruelty, who had declared that it would never be 
well with Scotland until the south of the Forth, where the cove- 
nanters chiefly abounded, was turned into a hunting-field, and 
who had witnessed the limbs of the presbyterians crushed and 
mangled in the boot, with exquisite and savage glee — she had 
little to expect ; and the cold reception she met with from men 
in power, she devoutly contrasts with the benignity and mercy 
with which the Supreme Ruler of heaven and of earth ever wel- 
comes the humble suppliant, who approaches his throne through 
Jesus Christ. " Among some sweet hours then," she writes, 
" though in a very troublesome attendance at Windsor, where 
great ones of the world were solicited and waited on with no lit- 
tle painfulness and charge, O how did it give occasion to com- 
mend the preferableness of his matchless service, who is King 



LADY CAMPBELL OF AUCHINBRECK. 411 

of kings and Lord of lords ! who does not scare at petitioners 
because of their blemishes and importunity! there being no want 
of leisure at his blessed throne ; no destitute case is slighted by 
him ; no wilderness condition in a solitary way doth make peti- 
tions burdensome to him, but he satisfies the longing soul, and fil- 
leth the hungry with good things ; no distress, peril, or sword, 
separates from his love, nor does he break the bruised reed, or 
quench the smoking flax ; with him the weary and heavy laden 
find acceptance ; no difficulty being too great for him who saveth 
to the uttermost all that come to God through him." 

The sight she had of the court, when at London, was far from 
exciting in her mind the feelings of envy. Her aspirations were 
after nobler enjoyments than the pageantry and luxury of a court 
could bestow. She had chosen the better part, and she thanked 
God, that, by his grace, he had enabled her to prefer occupying 
a place among the wronged and injured of his people, to posses- 
sing all the wealth and honors of the world. She thus writes in 
her diary, and the sentiments bespeak the just views she had of 
the objects of ambition, which become a rational and an immortal 
being : — " London, at King's Court. — Soon after this [that is, 
after November, 1685], having occasion to see the outward splen- 
dor of the court, and bravery of such as sit at ease in the world, 
and have all that their heart could wish, and are in the height 
of their enjoyment, all appeared to me to be according to the 
Lord's reckoning, and was esteemed to be but as shadows and 
dreams, that do evanish and bear little bulk when put in compe- 
tition with the least amount or degree of enjoyment of God, in 
Jesus Christ, and did extort this short meditation : ' O incom- 
parably matchless choice, that can never be suitably esteemed, 
or enough valued, loved, or delighted in, it being found that there 
is no true tranquillity, nor sure peace or comfort but in God ; 
once mine and ever mine ; there being no change or alteration 
in his love. And at this time it was made matter of praise, that 
ever he had discovered to me the preferableness of choosing af- 
fliction with the people of God, to enjoying the pleasures of sin 
for a season. The blessing of them that are ready to perish be 
for ever upon him, who has discovered and taught the meaning 
of that blessed promise, ' And every one that hath forsaken 
houses or brethren, or sisters, or father or mother, or wife or 
children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive an hundred- 
fold, and shall inherit everlasting life' (Matt. xix. 29) ; which is 
seen to be not only full of compensation, but wonderfully beyond 
any temporal enjoyment that ever was enjoyed elsewhere. His 



412 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

fellowship, his sympathy, his tender mercy, his matchless love ; 
O incomparable "felicity and portion ! O to give thanks unto the 
Lord, for his mercy endureth for ever." 

At the time that Lady Campbell was in London, the English 
puritans were greatly oppressed. King James was rigorously 
executing the severest laws in force against them. Richard 
Baxter was in prison ; John Howe was in exile. Puritan con- 
gregations could only meet by night, in private houses, or in 
waste places ; while their ministers were forced to preach to 
them in the garb of draymen, colliers, or sailors, and to steal into 
the houses where their hearers were assembled, through windows 
and trap-doors.* To this distressing condition of the English 
nonconformists, various allusions are made in Lady Campbell's 
diary. She states that, while in London, she heard the word 
preached only in a very private manner, in consequence " of the 
spirit, of violence and persecution which at that time raged in 
London." On one occasion, she there enjoyed the ordinance 
of the Lord's supper ; but the privacy with which it was observed, 
and the means taken to prevent discovery, indicate the extreme 
rigor with which the laws against nonconformity were enforced, 
It was dispensed in the night-time, in a private house where a 
select company had assembled for the holy service. The min- 
isters who officiated were two Scotsmen, Mr. Nicholas Blaikie, 
and Mr. George Hamilton — the former, minister of Roberton at 
the restoration, from which charge he was ejected for noncon- 
formity ; and the latter, minister in the High church of Edinburgh 
after the revolution. The number of communicants was about 
forty. Speaking of this sacramental occasion, after the revolu- 
tion, Lady Campbell says, it " gave occasion for mournful con- 
siderations ; and though a great privilege to be admitted to [this 
ordinance], yet now, when looking back on the distress, and 
barbarous treatment and hazard, that were in those days, which 
made meeting together about uncontroverted commanded duties 
to be a crime, this may heighten our notes of praise, and estima- 
tion of our privileges, that those restraints have so graciously 
been removed that now we have such gospel days. This is the 
doing of the Lord, and wondrous in our eyes." 

Very different was the manner in which the Roman catholics 
were dealt with by King James. "While the most eminent of the 
puritan divines were imprisoned, or in exile, friars and monks 
crowded the streets of London. While the puritans were inter- 
dicted the freedom of the press, the presses of Oxford were 
* Macaulay's History of England, vol. ii , pp. 201, 214. 



LADY CAMPBELL OF AUCHINBRECK. 413 

throwing off, under a royal license, breviaries and mass-books in 
thousands. While the puritans could only meet to worship God, 
in the manner they judged most agreeable to his will, in private 
houses, by stealth, " the host was publicly exposed in London, 
under the protection of the pikes and muskets of the foot-guards ;" 
and the popish worship was conducted in their chapels, in the 
most open and ostentatious manner.* During her stay in the 
English capital, much of this fell under the observation of Lady 
Campbell ; to whom, as to the great body of the protectant com- 
munity, it was a just cause of grief, as well as of painful appre- 
hension, though it served to establish her faith in the truth of the 
protestant doctrines. " One time there" [in London, 1685], says 
she, " going by a popish chapel, with a very heavy heart, to see 
such crowdings so avowedly to this idolatrous worship, two or 
three of us went to the door to see the manner of their worship, 
who thus were deluded, being told we might, without going in, 
see them without being seen, which proved otherwise ; for, being 
noticed as strangers to their foppery, after standing a while to 
observe and wonder at this abomination, to see it set up in a 
protestant country, we had nearly been knocked down unawares, 
but narrowly escaped — from which the hazard was seen of ven- 
turing upon curiosity — yet blessed be God for this much of in- 
struction, in seeing such a sight as helped to confirm us in the 
truth of the one Mediator between God and man." 

At London, her intercessions in behalf of her husband, Sir 
Duncan, met with so little success, that, at the very time of her 
being there, the government were proceeding against him, in his 
absence, to the greatest possible extremity. — On the 11th of Sep- 
tember, 1685, when she had been in London a few weeks, the 
Scottish privy council ordered the king's advocate to proceed 
against him, and others, before the justiciary court, for joining 
with Argyll ; and, previously, to examine witnesses in accordance 
with the king's letter. f On the 12th of October, he and thirty- 
two Argyllshire heritors were " cited on sixty days, for treason ;" 
and, on the 14th of December, being called at the justiciary court 
to be forfeited on probation, their case was delayed to the 5th of 
January, 1686.^ On the 5th of January that year, when she had 
been in London nearly five months, he and the Argyllshire heri- 
tors, already referred to, were tried on an indictment of rebellion 
and treason, for their concern in Argyll's insurrection ; and, their 

*Macaulay's History of England, vol. ii., p. 204. 

t Wodrow ? s History, vol. iv., p. 320. 

t Fountainhall's Decisions, vol. i., p. 370. 

35* 



414 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

case having been remitted to a jury, who brought in a verdict of 
guilty, they were forfeited in life and fortune.* 

At length, finding that all her pains at court in behalf of Sir 
Duncan were to very little purpose, she considered it needless 
to wait in London any longer. But, when about to leave the 
English capital, in March, 1686, she was in some difficulty wheth- 
er to embark for Holland, or to return to Scotland. Her affection 
to, and sympathy with her distressed and endeared husband, in- 
clined her to join him in Holland ; but against such an intention 
her mother and others endeavored to dissuade her, judging it 
would be more conducive to his interest for her to return to 
Scotland. But at last she resolved to go to Holland, convinced 
that this was her duty, though she confesses that it was afflicting 
to her to think of leaving in a strange land, and of not accompa- 
nying home, her dear mother, who had been at such pains and 
toil for her ; and that " deference and duty to one of the best of 
parents, made her not complying with her mother's demand very 
affecting." 

She accordingly parted with her mother in March or April, 1686, 
to go to some seaport town in England, which she does not name, 
whence she was to embark for Holland. She was entirely alone, 
not having even a servant with her, in consequence of the sever- 
ity of the times. In this place she was detained by contrary 
winds twelve days, during which time she was lodged in a board- 
ing establishment, where she knew no individual, " save the 
Christian sweet woman to whose house she had been recom- 
mended." But, though removed from friends and acquaintances, 
she here found favor among strangers, several providential in- 
stances of which she refers to, without being further particular. 
Interested in her case, from the information which, without her 
knowledge, he had received concerning her, the master of the 
vessel, unasked, took his wife along with him to accompany her 
during the voyage. Both of them were extremely kind to her ; 
and the weather being highly favorable, the voyage was the most 
agreeable that could have been desired. 

Landing in Holland at the Brill, she was cordially welcomed 
by Sir Duncan, who had come to meet her. They went together 
to Amsterdam, where they had the states' protection, which se- 
cured him from the danger to which he would have been else- 
where exposed, in consequence of his forfeiture ; and she observes 

* Fountainhall's Decisions, vol. i., p. 389. Wodrow's History, vol. iv., p. 355. 
Fountainhall says, that the witnesses against them were the laird of Ellaugreg, &c, 
though under process of treason themselves. 



LADY CAMPBELL OF AUCHINBRECK. 415 

that " though the place was lonely, and our circumstances not 
without discouragement, yet we were not wholly debarred from 
gospel means, which was several times refreshing, as the effect 
of gracious condescension undeserved, which many times sup- 
ported us." She adds, " In this place, the Lord stirred up friends 
in a strange land, and particularly some who are yet alive of our 
nation, who were most stedable and friendly, the sense of which 
is desired to be borne with the greatest gratitude ; and whose con- 
versation, usefulness, painfulness, and ministry since, have many 
times been strangely countenanced to some, as doth leave a last- 
ing impression to the charging such of mine as shall, as I hope, 
survive me, to have the endearing sense of it, and, to their power, 
to requite with all suitable just veneration and esteem, leaving it 
as my desire not to be unmindful of it, since to such, I shall to 
my dying day, wish that the Lord may requite them with his 
special favor, and that grace and peace may be multiplied to them." 

The persecution continuing so severe in Scotland, as to pre- 
sent little hope of Sir Duncan being soon able to reside, with 
safety, in his native country, Lady Campbell returned to Scot- 
land, in June, 1686, with the design of bringing over to Holland 
their only child, and of settling their little affairs, in order to 
their more fixed abode in that land of freedom. Leaving Sir 
Duncan for a time, " with a very sore heart," she went to Rot- 
terdam for a Scottish vessel, which was thence to embark for 
Scotland. The winds being contrary, she was detained in that 
city for some time, and on the sabbath she heard sermon in the 
Scotch church by the minister of the church, Mr. Robert Flem- 
ing, whom she terms " that great and shining light in his day." 
So highly did she estimate the public institutions of religion, that 
her detention in Rotterdam over the sabbath was rather pleasing 
to her than otherwise, as it afforded her an opportunity of wor- 
shipping God in his sanctuary, a privilege which she the more 
highly prized from the frequency with which she was deprived 
of it in her native land. The text from which she heard Mr. 
Fleming preach was John xi. 40 : " Said I not unto thee, that, if 
thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God V 

On the following sabbath, she was on board the vessel, which 
lay at anchor in the Brill, and heard two sermons preached by 
Mr. William Moncrieff, minister of Largo, after the revolution* 
(a son of the excellent Mr. Alexander Moncrieff, minister of 
Scoonie, who had been ejected for nonconformity after the Res- 

* For some notices of Mr. William Moncrieff, see Dr. Eraser's Life of Ebenezer 
Erskine, p. 209 ; and his Life of italph Erskine, p. 146. 



416 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

toration), who was coming over to Scotland in the same ship, 
from these words in Psalm xlv. 2 : " Thou art fairer than the 
sons of men ; grace is poured into thy lips ;" by which she was 
much comforted and confirmed. Next sabbath, they were tossed 
on the ocean by a great storm, which drove them back on the 
coast of Holland ; but, when the seamen were about to cut the 
mast, the tempest was allayed. The sabbath after they lay at 
anchor at the Bass, where a considerable number of the presbyte- 
rians were then in confinement; and she had "a sweet day of 
the sunshine of the gospel," Mr. William Moncrieff having 
preached from these words in Isaiah xxxii. 2 : " A man shall be 
an hiding-place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest ; 
as rivers of water in a dry place, and as the shadow of a great 
rock in a weary land.'" 

On landing at Leith, the severity of the persecution suggested 
it to her as prudent to disguise herself, to escape discovery ; and 
she came in disguise to the house of her dear friend, Mr. Alex- 
ander Moncrieff, the ejected minister of Scoonie, who was now 
residing, with his family, in Edinburgh. " Here," says she, " I 
had much kind welcome and sympathy, from some who are now 
in glory, and others of them yet alive, whose sympathy and un- 
deserved concern is desired to be borne in mind with much grat- 
itude." But any uncertain abode she had was with her dear 
mother, at Stirling ; of whose tender care and affection for all 
her children, and for her in particular, she speaks, as we have 
seen before, in the highest terms.* She continued in Scotland 
eight weeks, during which time she looked after the worldly 
affairs of Sir Duncan, which had then a very ruined-like and 
discouraging aspect. 

On her way to Holland, with her only child, she encountered 
a great storm at sea, and was even in " hazard of being swal- 
lowed up by the waves ;" under which, though she was " in an- 
guish of spirit through excessive fear," she got her " burdens de- 
volved on the blessed Rock of ages." On her arrival, she was 
" welcomed with much affection and kindness" by Sir Duncan ; 
and they took up their residence in Rotterdam. In this city, our 
expatriated countrymen enjoyed singular religious advantages. 
Mr. Thomas Halyburton, professor of divinity at St. Andrews,! 
who, in May, 1685, when a boy, went with his mother to Rot- 
terdam, whither she was obliged to retire by reason of the hot 

* See p. 414. 

t Lady Campbell was personally acquainted with Halyburton; and. to her his 
Memoirs, published after his death, were dedicated by his widow. 



LADY CAMPBELL OF AUCHINBRECK. 417 

persecution, thus writes in his memoirs : " On the Lord's day, 
we had three sermons and two lectures in the Scots church ; on 
Thursday, a sermon there likewise. On Tuesday, one of the 
suffering ministers by turns preached. There was a meeting for 
prayer on Wednesday. On Monday and Friday nights, Mr. 
James Kirkton commonly lectured in his family. On Saturday, 
he catechized the children of the Scots sufferers who came to 
him."* Lady Campbell speaks of " the powerful and great 
means of which she had a constant succession, under dear Mr. 
Fleming's ministry ;" and in her diary there are many entries 
containing notes of the sermons she heard preached, both on or- 
dinary sabbaths, and on sacramental solemnities, in the Scottish 
church at Rotterdam, by Mr. Fleming and other exiled Scottish 
ministers. In addition to other religious services in which they 
engaged, it was the custom of the English and Scottish minis- 
ters who had taken shelter in Holland from the persecution, 
to meet together once in the week, or more frequently, for sol- 
emn prayer, on account of the distressing state of affairs in their 
native land. Lady Campbell was in the habit of attending these 
meetings ; and she was wont to tell a curious anecdote of John 
Howe, the celebrated English nonconformist divine,f strongly 
illustrative of the uncommon fervor of his devotion. The anec- 
dote, which we give in the words of Wodrow, is as follows : 
"Mr. John Anderson tells me [1726] he had this account from 
Lady Henrietta Campbell, of the great Mr. Howe. He was a 
man that was the most mighty wrestler in prayer she ever knew, 
and gave one instance when in Holland, where he was about 
1686. The banished and refugee ministers met weekly, or of- 
tener, for prayer, where Lady Henrietta used to be present. 
After some had prayed, Mr. Howe's turn came. He continued 
long, and with such fervor that the sweat streamed down. Mrs. 
Howe, his wife, knowing his manner, and that it would not di- 
vert him in time of it, stepped to him gently, took off his wig, 
and with her napkin dried the sweat, and put on his wig again ! 
This she was obliged to do twice, if not thrice, and Mr. Howe 
seemed not to know what was done to him."| This exactly 
corresponds with the description Dr. Calamy gives of Howe's 
gift of prayer. " He had great copiousness and fluency in pray- 
er," says that writer ; " and the hearing him discharge that duty 
upon particular sudden emergencies, would have been apt to 

* Halyburton's Memoirs, part ii., chap. i. 

t Howe had gone abroad in 1685, and, after travelling in various parts, settled at 
Utrecht in 1686. | Wodrow's Analecta, vol. iii , p. 303. 



413 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

have made the greatest admirer of stinted forms ashamed of the 
common cavils and objections against that which is usually call- 
ed extemporary prayer."* 

In the middle of July, 1688, Lady Campbell was necessarily 
called to the Hague, there to attend the court several days ; hav- 
ing, probably, been invited by William, prince of Orange, and 
Princess Mary, to come along with Sir Duncan, who shared in 
the counsels of William, in reference to the contemplated inva- 
sion of Britain ; the tyranny of James having now become intol- 
erable to the great majority of his subjects, of all parties, with 
the exception of the papists. She went, though " not without 
great reluctancy, and fear of the consequences." But " the sight 
of the splendor of that court," excited in her mind more agreea- 
ble feelings than the sight of the splendor of the court of King 
James; "it being a satisfaction," she remarks, "to see great 
ones so promising, and even blessing-like to the church and peo- 
ple of God, and that, hitherto had been such a support to many 
in distress;" and the enterprise, of the result of which, from the 
failure of Argyll's attempt, she was not without apprehensions, 
was destined to have a more successful issue, being the means 
appointed by providence of delivering these lands from the grind- 
ing yoke of tyranny and persecution. 

Preparations were for some time vigorously made for this un- 
dertaking; and when William's intentions became known, they 
met with the cordial approbation of the great body of the popula- 
tion in Holland. The English and Scottish refugees embarked 
in the cause with ardent enthusiasm ; and the Dutch poured forth 
their earnest and united prayers to Almighty God for its success. 
Lady Campbell thus describes the state of public feeling in Hol- 
land : — 

"About this time [September 16, 1688], the great design 
came to be above board, of forces coming to Britain, with the 
then prince of Orange, wherein the Lord did marvellously ap- 
pear, in animating of hearts to a joint concurrence with this proj- 
ect, so that more than ordinary concern might have been read in 
the generality of persons, who were well-wishers to the protest- 
ant interest ; and after preparation made, and joint supplication 
appointed to be through all the churches in the Seven Provinces, 
though there wanted not great difficulties to grapple with, be- 
cause of apparent danger and hazards ; yet when accorded to, 
and time appointed for this undertaking, there was a wonderful 
resoluteness and forwardness that possessed, in general, all who 
* Calamy's Life of Howe, prefixed lo the imperial octavo edition of his Works, p. 1, 



LADY CAMPBELL OF AUCHINBRECK. 419 

were honored with this undertaking, as if the Lord had endued 
them with more than ordinary resoluteness and courage, which 
must be ascribed to his doing only, who moved this design and 
carried it on for our deliverance ; for which, O to be helped for 
ever to bless his^name !" 

Sir Duncan was among those who were appointed first to em- 
bark ; and they attended, in their ships, nearly three weeks be- 
fore the rest were ready. Previous to his embarkation, Lady 
Campbell took leave of him with a heavy heart ; being now left 
alone in a strange country, and not knowing but the event might 
be terrible. " Yet," says she, " there being so much at stake, 
each appeared to add his mite with more cheerfulness, resolu- 
tion, and submission, than another ; more than, without immediate 
support, could have been attained. That was made a time of 
more than ordinary concern, and even of liberty and enlargedness 
often, which was very supporting, and did much sweeten what 
otherwise would with great difficulty have been got over." 

About a fortnight after the embarkation of their friends, she 
and several others having been told that some of the ships lying 
at anchor were lost (a report to which they gave the more credit 
from the stormy and unfavorable state of the weather), resolved 
to visit their friends, though at a distance of two days' journey, 
in order to ascertain whether or not the report was true ; that, 
in case of finding them safe, they might supply them with fresh 
provisions. Having travelled to the neighborhood of the place 
where the ships were anchored, they went out to them in a small 
boat; in doing which their lives were exposed to imminent peril, 
the boat having been cast in among the fleet in a mighty storm. 
Missing Sir Duncan, Lady Campbell was greatly discomposed ; 
but, on learning that no harm had befallen him, her mind was 
calmed, and she, with her fellow-visiters, were safely brought to 
land, notwithstanding the severity of the storm. She returned 
to her dwelling at Rotterdam on the Friday, and for some days 
after experienced much weariness and great indisposition in 
consequence of the fatigue and anxiety to which she had been 
subjected. 

At length, William's fleet, which consisted of more than six 
hundred vessels, being prepared for sailing, he took farewell of 
the states of Holland, at a solemn sitting they had on the 16th of 
October, on which day also public prayers were offered up for 
him in all the churches of the Hague ; and, accompanied by the 
deputies of the principal towns to his yacht, he arrived in the 
evening at Helvoetsluys, and went on board " the Brill" — the 



420 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

name of the vessel in which he sailed. On the 19th of October, 
he put to sea with his armament, and " traversed, before a strong 
breeze, about half the distance between the Dutch and English 
coasts. Then the wind changed, blew hard from the west, and 
swelled into a violent tempest. The ships scattered ; and, in 
great distress, regained the shore of Holland as they best might. 
The Brill reached Helvoetsluys on the 21st of October."* 

Lady Campbell describes the magnificent appearance of the 
fleet, when about to sail ; the storm by which it was compelled 
to return ; and the merciful providence observable even in this 
apparent disaster. " About this time, all the fleet were in readi- 
ness to sail, and jointly met to attend King William in this great 
expedition to Britain ; multitudes being gathered together, on 
steeples, to see this splendid sight, which, in rank and file, went 
out this evening, as was esteemed a beautiful sight for grandeur, 
order, and comely fortitude, in this so great a design, that though 
there were some whose hearts were trembling with them, yet 
the most were rejoicing, as if the arm of man could have accom- 
plished this marvellous achievement, which, ere the next morn- 
ing, was seen to be ascribed to a higher hand ; this night there 
being raised so formidable a storm as did wholly scatter all this 
fleet, so that generally there were few this night who had any 
concern but were put to their peremptors and sad conclusions, 
fearing them to be wholly lost, (the dear princess and several be- 
sides sitting up the most of the night), and many were running 
to the coasts to observe what shipwreck could be discerned. It 
was a most terrible night, by both sea and land. But oh, tho 
wonderful condescension of the Lord, who knew better than we 
did how to deliver, and how to forward his own work, that made 
this the means of carrying it on ; for, had they gone forward to 
their intended landing, they had met with a great army intended 
to have routed them ! But, besides, several of those vessels hav- 
ing fallen short of provisions, by long attendance, and also they 
not having landing-boats, all this made it soon after a marvellous 
providence that they were made by this storm to return without 
the loss of one man, and with the loss of only one [vessel],! and 

* Macaulay*s History of England, vol. ii , pp. 476-480. 

t Macaulay says that no life was lost, and that "one vessel only had been cast 
away."— (History of England, vol. ii , p. 477.) Wodrow has the following entry in 
his Analecta: " Mr. John Anderson tells me that he had this from Lady Henrietta 
Campbell, who was in Holland at the time — that there were very great measures 
of a spirit of prayer in Holland, at the time of the prince of Orange's coming off: 
that it was a very remarkable mercy to his design that he was put back the Hist 
time, for the French squadron was at sea, and would certainly have attacked him | 
and, through some mistake, their boats, and several other things neoessary for laud. 



LADY CAMPBELL OF AUCHINBRECK. 421 

some horses that were thrown overboard. The ship that King 
William was in was among the first that in safety returned, to 
the joy and rejoicing of all Holland, and particularly those of 
us who had our nearest and dearest relations embarked with him, 
all returning in safety lo Helvoetsluys, where their adode was 
more than twelve days, till they were wholly recruited again." 
She adds : " My dear husband was among the first that arrived, 
and gave account of their safety ; the seeing of whom so unex- 
pectedly made me almost at the fainting with the surprise ; which 
was a pleasant disappointment, and ground of thankfulness, that 
the Lord had been so gracious in disappointing the hopes of ene- 
mies and fears of friends." 

In the same evening on which Sir Duncan arrived, she went 
with him and some friends by water to Helvoetsluys, where, 
from the crowded state of the place, they, like many others, re- 
mained together in the harbor, in the yacht, for three or four days, 
till they found accommodation in a Dutch minister's house, in a 
country village near by, providing for themselves their own pro- 
visions. This village contained at this time many of the Scots 
and English — not less, it was computed, than several hundreds. 

When William and his fleet, were ready to put to sea a second 
time, she and others were allowed to attend their friends to their 
ships, "which," says she, "was a beautiful sight to see such a 
number gathered together for the protestant interest, in a time 
when so great an invasion was made on it and our properties." 
On the night on which the fleet set sail, which was on the even- 
ing of November 1, she was in a state of no inconsiderable agi- 
tation and anxiety of mind, " not only from the hazards that ap- 
peared to those in whom she was particularly interested, but 
even from the hazard so public and great a design might be ex- 
posed unto, if the Lord did not signally appear for them." It 
seems to have been about this time that she dreamed the dream 
recorded by Wodrow, and which we shall here give in his own 
words : " Mr. John Anderson of Kirkmaiden," says he, " tells 
me that he hath this from Lady Henrietta Campbell : that she 
went with her husband to the shore-side, when he embarked with 
the prince, and, after she came back, she slept but little that 
night : that in the morning after, she had fell to a slumber, and 
had this remarkable dream, which she communicated to the 
countess of Sutherland and the princess of Orange, who were 
much taken with it. She thought she was at the fleet, and they 

ing, were left behind them, withont which they could have done little, though they 
had gone forward."— Vol. i., pp. 280-282. 

36 



422 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

came safe to the coast of England, and at the place where they 
landed there was a great, high, brazen wall before them. She 
thought they resolved to land, and when they were endeavoring 
to get over it, it fell down before them in bibles. She could not 
but reflect afterward, upon the success of the expedition, upon 
this as some emblem of that clear knowledge, and the settlement 
of the gospel, and the use-making of the Scripture in opposition 
to popery, that followed the happy revolution. This person is a 
lady of great piety and good sense, and no visionary."* 

The day after the fleet, put to sea, Lady Campbell, and such 
others as had been taking farewell of their friends, journeyed to 
their respective homes, some of them on foot and some of them 
in wagons, with more hope as to the issue than, since the last 
disaster, they had been able to entertain. 

Not long after this, the prince of Orange's undertaking being 
crowned with complete success, and James being driven from 
his throne, she embarked in a vessel bound for England, on her 
way to Scotland, where she and Sir Duncan had now the pros- 
pect of being able to live in peace, and of having restored to 
them their forfeited estates. But, pleasing as was this prospect, 
it was not without a pang that she left the land of her exile, to 
which, as the sanctuary that had sheltered her from persecu- 
tion, her heart had contracted a grateful attachment ; and it was 
particularly painful to her feelings to part with Mr. Fleming, 
from whose ministry and social intercourse she had often de- 
rived much comfort and edification ; so that, to use her own 
Avords, " this parting was as the child being bereaved of the 
breast." 

On her arrival at London, she found the cause of William uni- 
versally popular, and matters very different from what they were 
in 1685 and 1686, when, during her abode in the capital, she 
could hear sermon only by stealth, and observe the Lord's sup- 
per only during the darkness of the night, in a private house. 
Now, dissenters could assemble to conduct religious worship 
in the most public manner, without any to make them afraid. 
" There were acclamations and rejoicing," she says, " even in 

• Woilrow's Analecta, vol. i., pp. 280-282. Wodrow says, in another part of 
the same work: "Mr. John Anderson [May, 1725] tells me several accounts of 
Lady Henrietta Campbell, which I believe are set down in some of the former vol- 
umes : that of her dream about the prince of Orange being: driven back, and the 
wall falling down in bibles ; that about a fellow coming in to her asking charity with 
a drawn dagger; that about the Lord's supplying her straits, after a sweet scripture 
was borne in upon her by means of the princess of Orange " — (Ibid., vol. iii. p. 196.) 
The last two anecdotes here referred to are not recorded in the preceding volumes 
of the Aualecta, as Wodrow supposes, and are probably now lost. 



LADY CAMPBELL OF AUCHINBRECK. 423 

the streets for this great deliverance. And, oh, how refreshing 
was it to find, that the Lord had opened a door so marvellously to 
gospel privileges, which, at leaving the place [London], there 
was so little probability of. But what marvellous things are with 
him who is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in working ! 
And as this work was memorable and great, so it did greatly en- 
dear the instrument by whom it was carried on." 

She speaks, in a similar manner, of the state of Scotland on 
her reaching Edinburgh. " Our arrival at Edinburgh had its 
own mixture of great mercy, and of that crowning mercy of being 
welcomed with access to the purity of gospel ordinances ; being 
the sweeter on our calling to mind the restraint and difficulty 
that formerly had been seen there in later years, when made the 
seat of bloodshed and oppression."* 

On the triumph of the cause of civil and religious freedom, in 
which Lady Campbell and Sir Duncan had suffered so much, 
they were fairly entitled to some compensation, and William, 
when prince of Orange, having promised to remember them, she 
reminded Lord Melville, secretary of state for Scotland, of their 
claims.f Nor was the government of William backward to do 
them justice, by at least restoring to them their own. Sir Dun- 
can's name appears, among hundreds of other names, in the act 
passed in the Scottish parliament, July, 1690, rescinding the for- 
feitures and fines incurred by the covenanters on account of their 
principles, since the year 1665, and restoring such of them as 
were then alive, or their heirs and successors, to their goods, 
fame, and worldly honors, and warranting them to use all lawful 
means for the recovery of the same. And, on the 8th of July 
that same year, the parliament, on hearing read Sir Duncan's 
petition, formerly referred to, in relation to the cruelties, robber- 
ies, and oppressions, committed on himself and his tenants, after 
the suppression of Argyll's insurrection, grant warrant for citing 
the persons named in the petition as the perpetrators, and the 
representatives of such of them as were dead, to compear before 
them within fifteen days after the charge, to answer to the com- 
plaint, provided the parliament should be sitting, and otherwise 
to compear before the commission, appointed by an act of this 
parliament, entitled " Act for rescinding fines and forfeitures ;" 
the hearing of the parties, and the taking probation upon the points 
of the complaint, being remitted to the said commission, who were 

* Here the diary of Lady Campbell closes. 

t See her letter to that nobleman, dated January 6, 1689, among the Levin and 
Melville papers, p. 44. 



424 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

to report to the next session of that, or a subsequent parliament.* 
In the parliament of June, 1693, the case relating to the repairing 
the damages of the baronet, and all other similar sufferers, is re- 
mitted to the lords of the privy council, in order to their sending 
a recommendation in reference to that matter to his majesty.! 

After the revolution, Sir Duncan, intending to reside, with his 
family, at Lochgair, proposed, in a letter to the synod of Argyll, 
dated 4th August, 1690, that a church should be planted there; 
promising to dedicate the tithes he had about that place as a part 
of the stipend of the minister to be settled, and offering to build 
a suitable church at his own expense. The proposal was favor- 
ably received, but, for reasons unknown to us, it was never car- 
ried into effect.! Sir Duncan was a commissioner for the shire 
of Argyll, in the Scottish parliament, for several years after the 
revolution. He died in November, 1700, as we learn from the 
records of the Scottish parliament ; for, on the 14th of that month, 
a petition from the freeholders of Argyllshire was read before the 
parliament craving warrant to elect a commissioner in his room, 
in respect of his apparently hopeless indisposition, his own de- 
mission being read at the same time ; and, in the proceedings 
of the 9th of the following month, he is mentioned as " de- 
ceased. 1 ' It is a singular fact, that, in his last days, Sir Duncan 
embraced the popish religion. In the petition of the freeholders 
of Argyllshire, another reason, besides his sickness why they 
crave warrant to elect a commissioner to the parliament in his 
place, is, " that several members of the parliament had declared 
that he owned himself to be a papist." This was a source of deep 
affliction to Lady Campbell ; for " his eternal interest was no 
less coveted by her than her own, a duty she ever thought due 
to so near and dear a relation as a husband." But, from a pas- 
sage in her diary, there seems some reason to believe that, on 
his deathbed, his sentiments underwent an important change, and 
that he built his hopes of heaven upon a more substantial foun- 
dation than the delusions of popery. After adverting to her so- 
licitude about the welfare of his soul, and the enlargement she 
obtained in pleading at the throne of grace in his behalf, she 
adds, " who, I desire to hope, obtained mercy, as a thought of 
great consequence to some all the days of their life ; that in 
a manner are deputed, while in the world, to go to the grave 
mourning for what was wrong in him, and yet not to mourn as 
those that have no hope." 

* Acts of the parliament of Scotland. t Ibid. 

t New Statistical Account of Scotland, Glassary, Argyllshije, p. 694. 



LADY CAMPBELL OF AUCHINBRECK. 425 

Sir Duncan was succeeded by his son James, who was thrice 
married, and had by his three wives, fifteen children. Sir James 
died, at an advanced age, in the year 1756.* 

Lady Campbell survived the revolution more than thirty years. 
Whether during that period she continued to keep a register of 
her spiritual exercise, and of the events of her life, is uncertain. 
If she did so, no such document is now preserved ; and little of 
her subsequent history is known. It is, however, certain that 
she maintained a high reputation to the last for Christian excel- 
lence and piety. The following anecdote, recorded by Wodrow, 
places the strict integrity of her character in a very interesting and 
instructive light: " In the year 1703, this same Lady Henrietta 
Campbell was with her brother, the earl of Balcarres, at his 
house. He, with those of his kidney, were then very active in 
addressing the queen and parliament for a toleration, and they 
used all means to procure a multitude of hands to their address ; 
and this was one : They made many believe that it was quite 
another thing that they were subscribing than it was, and read it 
otherwise than it was really written ; and by this means got 
many well-meaning people to subscribe it. The earl caused his 
manager of the address bring it to L[ady] Hfenrietta], and told 
her such and such persons had subscribed, and pressed her much 
to do it ; and she said she would subscribe nothing till she heard 
it. He read it, and it was pretty smooth. She desired it to 
read herself, not from a jealousy, but really to ponder it. This 
would by no means be granted, which made her suspect. She 
found means to get a sight of the address, and she found it perfectly 
another thing than was read to her. She reproached her brother 
with this base dealing with poor people. He begged she would 
not discover, but she told him, unless he would stop it and tear 
it, she would ; and, upon his refusal, she acquainted the minister 
of the place with it, who, upon the sabbath, did very fully lay 
out the cheat to the people ; who next came in and complained 
that they were abused, and threatened to send a counter-address, 
with an account of their treatment to the parliament. This, with 
the thing's spreading, marred that address effectually ; and bred 
a great breach between the lady and her brother, for two or three 
years."f 

Lady Campbell died about 1721. Mr. John Anderson, minis- 
ter of Kirkmaiden, in a letter to Wodrow, dated October 24th 
that year, formerly quoted,! alludes to her as being then dead ; 

* Douglas's Baronage of Scotland, p. 62. 

t Wodrow's Analecta, vol. i., pp. 280-282. $ See p. 395. 

36* 



426 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

and her death, it is probable, took place not long before, for Wod- 
row, when the second volume of his " History of the Sufferings 
of the Church of Scotland" was going through the press, which 
was in the same year, speaks of her, in referring to the letter 
which the earl of Argyll wrote to her on the day of his execu- 
tion, as then alive.* 

The particulars relating to her last sickness not being preserved, 
we have not the satisfaction of receiving, from her dying lips, a 
testimony to the truth and importance of religion ; but what is of 
greater practical value, we have the memorials of the Christian 
virtues and graces which she exemplified. The preceding sketch 
has been almost confined to the first thirty or thirty-two years of 
her life, there being few materials for illustrating her subsequent 
history. But what has passed under our notice during that pe- 
riod exhibits, besides some variety of incident, many features of 
Christian excellence worthy of imitation. The depth and fervor 
of her early piety can not fail to have struck the reader ; and the 
maturity which the Christian graces attained in her more ad- 
vanced years, fulfilled the promising appearances of her child- 
hood and youth. Casting in her lot, in the morning of her days, 
with the persecuted covenanters, she suffered not a little in the 
cause of the civil and religious freedom of her country ; but un- 
der all her sufferings on that account which were endured in the 
prime of life, between the twentieth and the thirtieth years of 
her age, when she might naturally have expected the largest 
share of her earthly felicity, she displayed a patient continuance 
in well-doing, a faith in God's love, and a dependence on his 
providence, which bore testimony to the sincerity and the strength 
of her piety. Inspired with supreme love to God, she devoted 
much of her time to secret prayer, and the study of the Scrip- 
tures. On the sabbath, for which she had a high veneration, she 
accounted it an invaluable privilege to listen to the lessons of 
piety delivered by the ministers of the Word ; and when at any 
time deprived of this privilege, she spent the hours of that sa- 
cred day in the secret exercises of religion, in reading the Scrip- 
tures, in spiritual meditation, and in prayer. The observance 
of the sacrament of the Lord's supper was to her the most de- 
lightful service in which she could engage. Careful in observing 
Divine providence, she contemplated everything in her lot — all 
her trials, as well as all her mercies — as proceeding from God ; 
and, having chosen him as her portion, she was satisfied with 
the wisdom of her choice, all the things of the world, when com- 

* Wodrow's Histoty, vol. iv., p. 304. 



LADY CAMPBELL OF AUCHINBRECK. 427 

with him, sinking, in her estimation, into utter insignifi- 
cance. In every relation of life, whether as a daughter, a sister, 
a wife, or a mother, she acted an exemplary part. Warm and 
generous in her affections, she was a sincere and attached friend. 
Amiable in her dispositions, and engaging in her manners, she 
almost universally met with kind attentions among strangers, as 
well as among friends ; and singularly grateful in her temper of 
mind, the acts of kindness shown to her under her sufferings and 
wanderings she never forgot. They were preserved in her mem- 
ory as if engraven upon adamant ; and we find her leaving it, as 
a dying injunction upon those nearest and dearest to her whom 
she left behind, to remember and reward such proofs of sympa- 
thy and friendship ; nor is it unimportant to observe, how her 
gratitude to man was mingled with her gratitude to God ; for, while 
she refers with delight to the acts of kindness shown to her by 
man in the time of her affliction, she never fails to trace every such 
act of kindness to God, who, as she believed, disposed the hearts 
of men to pity and to befriend her. Such are some of the lead- 
ing features of the character of this lady, on whom God had con- 
ferred such abundant grace, and who is so well entitled to a place 
among those pious women of Scotland, who, in the face of per- 
secution, kept the commandment of God, and the testimony of 
Jesus Christ. 



428 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

GRISELL HUME, 

LADY BAILLIE OF JERVISWOOD.* 

Grisell Hume was born at Redbraes Castle,t in Berwick- 
shire, December 25, 1665. Her father, Sir Patrick Hume (after 
the revolution, first earl of Marcbmont), was eighth baron of 
Polwarth of his name, and was descended from a younger branch 
of the illustrious house of Dunbar, earls of March, whose origin is 
traced to the Saxon kings of England, and to princes or earls in 
Northumberland. Her mother was Grisell Kerr, daughter of 
Sir Thomas Kerr of Cavers. She was the eldest of eighteen 
children, whom Lady Hume bore to her husband, except two, 

* In drawing up this sketch, we are chiefly indebted to the Memoirs of Lady 
Baillie, written by her eldest daughter, Grisell, Lady Murray, of Stanhope. These, 
with Memoirs of the Honorable George Baillie, by the same lady, were printed in 
1828, under the editorship of Thomas Thomson, Esq., from the original MS, which 
has been carefully preserved in the family of Jerviswood. These memorials con- 
sist partly of information which she had received from her mother, who had a prin- 
cipal share in all that is related, and partly of what she had observed with her own 
eye. The tenderness of (ilia! piety, the ingenuous truthfulness, the line feeling, and 
agreeable good humor with which they are written: and the variety of interesting 
traits of Scottish simplicity and homeliness of character, which they contain, render 
the narrative extremely engaging. A celebrated authoress, Joanna Baillie, the mod- 
ern dramatist of " The Passions," from the enthusiastic admiration of Lady Baillie, 
with which these memoirs inspired her, has adopted her as a heroine of the highest 
order in the scale of female excellence, in her " Metrical Legends of Exalted Char- 
acters." Lady Murray, the authoress of these memoirs, was born in lfi93. In the 
month of August. 1710. at the age of seventeen, she was married at Edinburgh to 
Mr. Alexander Murray, the son and heir of Sir David Murray of Stanhope, baronet, 
by Lady Anne Bruce, daughter of Alexander, earl of Kincardine. But this mar- 
riage proved unfortunate. " Mr. Murray's appearance and manners in common so- 
ciety," says Mr. Thomson, "are said to have been prepossessing and specious; 
but it was soon discovered that, under a pleasing exterior, there lurked a dark, moody, 
and ferocious temper; or rather, perhaps, what ought to be described as a certain 
degree of constitutional insanity, which discolored all his views of the conduct and 
character of those about him, and made him the helpless victim of the most ground- 
less suspicions, and the most agonizing and uncontrollable passions. The parents 
of the young lady were, at length, driven to the painful necessity of instituting a 
" process of separation." on the ground that his wife was not in safety to live with 
him. To this proceeding, Mr. Murray, made the most obstinate resistance, and in- 
stituted a " counter process of adherence ;" but a formal " decree of separation" was 
at length pronounced by the commissary court of Edinburgh, on the 5th of March, 
1714 Lady Murray continued afterward to live in her father's family. Being the 
eldest daughter, and her only brother having died in early infancy, she succeeded 
to her father's estates; but, after her mother's death, she lived in family with her 
sister. Lady Binning, to whom, and to her second son, the estates were destined, 
on the death of the eldest sister without children. She died in June, 1759. 

t The modern name is Marcbmont house, and the present building is modern. It 
is embosomed in rich plantations; is a plain, but stately mansion, and is approached 
by one of the noblest avenues in the kingdom. The rooms contain an extensive 
collection of family and historical pictures. 



LADY BAILLIE OF JERVISWOOD. 429 

who died in infancy. She was named after her mother, and, 
being from infancy an interesting child, was the darling and com- 
fort of her parents. 

Her father, who Avas one of the most distinguished patriots and 
statesmen of his day, suffered not a little for his zealous appear- 
ances in the cause of religion and liberty. In 1674, he went up 
to London with the duke of Hamilton and others, to lay the griev- 
ances the nation suffered from the duke of Lauderdale's adminis- 
tration, before the king. The next year, the privy council hav- 
ing appointed garrisons to be placed in the houses of certain 
noblemen and gentlemen, in several counties, for the purpose of 
suppressing conventicles, and having ordained that the respec- 
tive counties should furnish them with meal, pots, pans, and can- 
dle, several shires refused to contribute for the maintenance of 
the garrisons, and Sir Patrick Hume was commissioned from the 
shire of Merse to complain to the council. Having remonstrated 
against this imposition as contrary to law, and appealed to the 
court of session for redress, he was imprisoned in September 
that year. In a letter to the council, dated 5th of October, his 
majesty approves of their imprisoning Polwarth, " as being a 
factious person," and commands them to declare him incapable 
of public trust, and to send him close prisoner to Stirling castle, 
till further orders. Sir Patrick continued in prison for many 
months. The king's letter, giving orders for his being set at lib- 
erty, though still continuing him incapable of all public trust, is 
dated February 24, 1676.* 

Lady Grisell thus began her life during the troubles of the 
persecution. At the time of her father's liberation from prison, 
she was little more than ten years of age ; and, soon after, those 
romantic incidents occur in her life which have given her an 
historical celebrity. From the tact and activity with which, far 
beyond one of her years, she accomplished whatever she was 
intrusted with, her parents sent her on confidential missions, 
which she executed with singular fidelity and success. In the 
summer of that same year, when Robert Baillie of Jerviswood, 
the early and intimate friend of her father, was imprisoned! for 
rescuing his brother-in-law, Mr. James Kirkton, from a Avicked 
persecutor, Captain William Carstairs, she was sent by her father 
from his country-house to Edinburgh,! a long road, to try if, from 

* Wodrow's History, vol. ii., pp. 295, 357 ; Douglas's Peerage, vol. ii., p. 179 ; 
Row's Life of Robert Blair, pp. 562, 565. 

t He was imprisoned in June, 1676, and was kept a prisoner for four months. 

t Lady Murray says that her mother, when sent on this errand, was " at the age 
of twelve." But, from comparing the date of her birth with the time of Baillie's 



430 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

her age, she could get admittance into the prison unsuspected, 
and slip a letter of information and advice into his hand, and 
bring back from him what intelligence she could. Proceeding 
on her journey to the capital, she succeeded in getting access to 
Baillie, though we are not informed in what way. The authoress 
of " Metrical Legends of Exalted Characters" has imagined the 
manner in which the little messenger got into Baillie's cell, and 
the circumstances of their interview. She describes Baillie, 
while sitting in his dark dungeon, sad and lonely, as hearing 
something moving softly toward him, and as inquiring, on observ- 
ing that it quickly stood by his side — 

" ' Such sense in eyes, so simply mild ! 
Is it a woman or a child ? 
Who art thou, damsel sweet ? — are not mine eyes beguiled V " 

To which the visitant answers : — 

" ' No — from the Redbraes' tower I come ; 
My father is Sir Patrick Hume ; 
And he has sent me for thy good, 
His dearly-honored Jerviswood. 
Long have I round these walls been straying, 
As it' with other children playing; 
Long near the pate have kept my watch 
The sentry's changing time to catch. 
With stealthy steps I gained the shade 
By the close-winding staircase made, 
And when the surly turnkey entered, 
But little dreaming in his mind 
Who followed him so close behind, 
Into this darkened cell, with beating heart, I ventured." " 

The legend then describes her as taking from her breast a letter 
from her father, and with " an eager, joyful look," presenting it 
to Baillie ; who, after reading it, and shedding blessings on her 
youthful head, gave her his answer to her father's secret note, 
and then inquired for those she left behind — 

" In Redbraes' tower, her native dwelling, 
And set her artless tongue a-telling, 
Which urchin dear had tallest grown, 
And which the greatest learning shown, 
Of lesson, sermon, psalm, or note, 
And sabbath questions learned by rote, 
And merry tricks and gambols played 
By evening fire, and forfeits paid." 

But in whatever way young Grisell got access to Baillie, and 
whatever were the circumstances of their interview, she success- 
fully accomplished the purpose of her mission. It is also to be 

imprisonment, it appears that she was then only between ten and eleven years of 
age. 



LADY BAILLIE OF JERVISWOOD. 431 

observed that it was in the prison, on this occasion, that she first 
saw Mr. Baillie's son, and that then and there originated that 
intimacy and attachment between him and her which afterward 
issued in their happy marriage. From that time, Grisell, who 
was the favorite of her parents before, became still more endeared 
to them ; and, reposing in her great confidence, they employed 
her on many adventures which, in those times, would have been 
perilous to persons more advanced in years, but in which, by her 
finesse and presence of mind, aided by her tender age, which 
prevented suspicion, she completely succeeded. 

About the month of July, 1678, her father was again made pris- 
oner in the tolbooth of Edinburgh.* But a petition having been 
presented to the king in his behalf, praying that, in consequence 
of his indisposition, he might be removed to a more healthy 
prison, the place of his imprisonment was soon changed from 
Edinburgh tolbooth to Dumbarton castle, in obedience to a letter 
from the king to the council, dated 4th of September. He con- 
tinued there a close prisoner for at least nearly a year, when he 
was liberated on the intercession of his English relation, and 
especially of the countess of Northumberland. The order for his 
liberation, which is contained in a letter from the king to the 
privy council, dated July 17, 1679, f states that "he had been 
imprisoned for reasons known to his majesty, and tending to 
secure the public peace ; and," it is added, " now the occasions 
of suspicion and public jealousy being over, he is ordered to be 
liberate."^ — " For an imprisonment under such motives," it has 
been justly observed, " his reputation is not likely to suffer in the 
eyes of posterity ; but if that posterity contemplates the picture 
of the tyranny which weighed upon Scotland during the duke of 
Lauderdale's administration, and to which there is no parallel in 
the English history of that day, it will do justice to the patriotism 
and public virtue which rose up in opposition to it."|| 

* The exact date of his second imprisonment is uncertain ; but, that it was about 
the time stated in the text, appears from the following sentence in " The Grievances 
of Lauderdale's Administration," which were in circulation about June, 1679 (Wod- 
row's History, vol. iii., p. 168) : " And Sir Patrick Hume hath been now almost a 
year imprisoned a second time, and nothing is yet laid to his charge." — Ibid., vol. 
iii., p. 161. 

t Lady Murray says that he " was confined fifteen months in Dumbarton castle." 
She must eitherbe mistaken as to the exact period of his imprisonment, or he must 
have remained in prison some months after the king issued orders for his liberation. 
She adds, " and was then set at liberty, without ever being told for what he was 
put up all that time. ' 

$ Wodrow's History, vol. ii., p. 481 ; and vol. iii., p. 161. The Marchmont Papers, 
edited by the Right Honorable Sir George Henry Rose, preface. 

|| The Marchmont Papers, preface. 



432 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

During the time that her father was a prisoner in Edinburgh 
tolbooth and in Dumbarton castle, young Grisell njade repeated 
journeys from Berwickshire to the place of his confinement, to 
carry to him intelligence, or to administer to him comfort. On 
such errands she always gladly went, when sent by her mother, 
whom affliction and care of the younger children kept at home, 
and who, besides, was less able to make journeys. Her mother, 
too, would have been more narrowly watched and more readily 
suspected than one of her tender age. 

When, in October, 1683, her father's friend Robert Baillie was 
apprehended in London, and sent down a prisoner to Scotland, 
her father, who was implicated in the same patriotic measures 
for preventing a popish succession to the British throne, for which 
Baillie was arrested, had too good ground to be alarmed for his 
own personal safety. But he was allowed, it would appear, to 
remain undisturbed in his own house till the month of September 
next year, when orders were issued by the government for his 
apprehension, and a party of troops had come to his house on 
two different occasions for that purpose, though they failed in 
getting hold of him. Upon this, he found it necessary to with- 
draw from home, and to keep himself in concealment, till he got 
an opportunity of going over to the contifltent.* The spot to 
which he betook himself for shelter was the family burying-place, 
a vault under ground at Polwarth church, at the distance of a 
mile from the house. Where he was, no person knew but Lady 
Hume, Grisell, and one man, James Winter, a carpenter, who 
used to work in the house, and lived a mile off*, whom they deemed 
trustworthy, and of whose fidelity they were not disappointed. 
The frequent examinations to which servants were at that time 
subjected, and the oaths by which it was attempted to extort dis- 
coveries from them, made Grisell and her mother afraid to com- 
mit the secret to any of them. By the assistance of James Win- 

* Lady Murray says : "After persecution began afresh, and my grandfather Bail- 
lie [wasj again in prison, her [Grisell's] father thought it necessary to keep con- 
cealed ; and soon found he had too good reason for so doing ; parties being con- 
tinually sent out in search of him, and often to his own house, to the terror of all iu 
it." Sir Patrick himself, in his Narrative of Argyll's Expedition in 1685, says : " In 
the month of September last [1684], when order was given to apprehend me, and 
my house was twice searched by troops sent for that end, so as I was obliged to 
abscond till I got a convenient way of getting off the isle, yon know how it was 
with me and the manner of my living.' - — (The Marchmont Papers, vol. iii., p. 2.) 
'• Hume of Polwarth," says Fountaiuhall, " being advertised be was to be seized, 
fled, and after search, not being found, bis lady told he had lain two years in prison, 
on a caprice of Lauderdale's, and so he did not desire to run that risk of new again, 
not having a body to endure it; and it was Lauderdale's bringing down the high- 
land host in 1678 which occasioned Polwarth speaking against him, September 11, 
1684."— Fountainhall's Notes, p. 104. 



LADY BAILLIE OF JERVISWOOD. 433 

ter, they got a bed and bedclothes carried during the night to his 
hiding-place ; and there he was concealed for a month, during 
which time the only light he had was that admitted by means of 
a chink at one end, through which nobody on the outside could 
see who or what was in the interior. While he abode in this 
receptacle of the dead, Grisell, with the most exemplary filial 
tenderness, and with the most vigilant precaution, ministered to 
nis temporal wants and comfort. Regularly at midnight, when 
men were sunk in sleep, she went alone to this dreary vault, car- 
rying to him a supply of food and drink ; and, to bear him com- 
pany, she stayed as long as she could, taking care to get home 
before day, to prevent discovery.* She had a great deal of hu- 
mor in telling a story, and during her stay she took a delight in 
telling him (nor was he less delighted in hearing her tell him) 
such incidents at home as had amused herself and the rest of the 
family ; and these were often the cause of much mirth and laugh- 
ter to them both. At that time she had a great terror for a church- 
yard, especially in the dark, as is not uncommon in young per- 
sons even at the age of eighteen or nineteen, from the idle nursery 
stories they have heard in childhood ; but her affectionate con- 
cern for her father made her stumble over the graves every night 
alone, fearless of everything but soldiers and parties in search of 
him ; and such was her dread of them, that the least noise or 
motion of a leaf made her tremble. The manse of the minister 
of the parish was near the church ; and the first night she went 
on her pious errand, his dogs (of which he seems to have had 
more than one, and which, as has been observed, were evidently 
in favor of the arbitrary party) continued to bark with such inces- 
sant violence as put her into the utmost dread of a discovery. In 
this emergency, necessity, which is said to be fruitful in inven- 
tion, suggested it to her mother that the most likely means of 
getting quit of this cause of annoyance was to endeavor, if pos- 
sible, to make the minister believe that his dogs were mad, and 
that therefore it was dangerous to retain them. She accordingly 
sent for the minister next day, and succeeding in producing on his 
mind the intended conviction, got him to hang them all ; and thus 
this amiable and affectionate daughter continued her midnight 
walks without further molestation. * 

There was also some difficulty in getting food to carry to her 

* In the inscription upon her monument, given at the close of this sketch, it is said 
that when Grisell thus ministered to her father, she was " an infant." This is clearly 
a mistake. From comparing the date of her birth with the time when her father 
was concealed in the family burying-vault, which was in the latter part of the year 
1684, it is evident that she was then a girl of nearly nineteen years of age. 
37 



434 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

father without exciting the suspicions of the servants ; and the 
only way in which she got it, was by stealing off her plate, at 
dinner, into her lap, a portion of the meat which had been pre- 
pared. Many an amusing story she was wont to tell her own 
children, after the days of the persecution had closed, about this, 
and other things of the like nature.* Her father liked sheep's 
head, and, while the children were eating their broth, she had 
succeeded in conveying, by stealth, the most part of one into her 
lap. When her brother, Alexander,! then a boy of about nine 
years of age, had disposed of his broth, the little fellow looked 
up in the hope of getting something else to eat, and perceiving, 
with astonishment, the empty plate, exclaimed, " Mother, will 
you look at Grisell : while we have been eating our broth, she 
has eat up the whole sheep's head !" This occasioned much 
mirth among them all, and when Grisell archly told her father 
the story the next time she went out. to him, he was greatly 
amused by it, and desired that Sandy might have a share of the 
next sheep's head. During all this time, having a happy natural 
temperament of mind, and being under the influence of genuine 
religion, Sir Patrick showed the same constant composure and 
cheerfulness of mind which he continued to possess to the close 
of life. He sought and found comfort from the word of God, and 
especially from the Psalms of David, which, containing a rich 
treasure of heavenly instruction and consolation, have often been 
the means of sustaining and encouraging good men in the time 
of trial. He had no light to read by, but, having previously com- 
mitted to memory Buchanan's Latin version of the Psalms, he 
beguiled the weary hours of his confinement, and derived much 

* "I should never have done," says Lady Murray. " if I related, or could remem- 
ber all the particulars I have heard my mother tell of those times — a subject she 
never tired of." 

t Alexander was born in 1675. Like his mother, brothers, and sisters, he shared 
his father's exile in Holland. After the revolution, having married the daughter 
and heiress of Sir George Campbell, of Cessnock, whose estate was entailed upon 
her and her heirs, he was distinguished as Sir Alexander Campbell, of Cessnock, till 
the death of his eldest brother, Patrick, in 1710, who, tbonch twice married, had 
no issue, when he became Lord Polwarth. Having studied the law, he entered on 
the practice of it as an advocate, and became a lord of session before he was thirty years 
of age. He was a privy councillor, and a lord of the exchequer in Scotland, and was a 
member of parliament, first for Kirkwall, and then for Berwickshire. On the death 
of his father, he became earl of Marchroont, and died in January. 1740. In his reli- 
gious principles and habits, he resembled bis father. " I find in his Bible,'' says 
Sir George H. Rose, " in his own handwriting, his name, the date of ' Cambray, 1st 
May, 1725,' and the following note : ' To be read thrice a year ; first, 1st January, 
second, 1st May ; third, 1st September ;' and the memorandum to do the thins' is 
accompanied by the plan for doing it, by a division of the Scriptures into portions, 
marked out by him, through the whole of the volume, for every morning and even- 
ing of each period of four months."— The Marchmont Papers, voL i., Preface, pp. 
xliii., xliv. 



LADY BAILL1E OF JERVISWOOD. 435 

comfort and enjoyment by repeating them to himself.* This 
version he retained in his memory to his dying day. "Two 
years before he died," says Lady Murray, " I was witness to his 
desiring my mother to take up that book, which, among others, 
always lay upon his table, and bidding her try if he had forgot 
his Psalms, by naming any one she would have him repeat, and 
by casting her eye over it, she would know if he was right, 
though she did not understand it; and he missed not a word in 
any place she named to him, and said they had been the great 
comfort of his life by night and day, on all occasions." 

As this gloomy vault, in which Sir Patrick had taken refuge, 
was no fit habitation for the living, his lady and daughter were 
contriving other places in which he might more comfortably re- 
main concealed. Among other suggestions, it occurred to them 
that a hiding-place might be formed in their own house, beneath 

* While lie thus lay, surrounded by the gloomy relics of the dead, Sit- Patrick, it 
seems, was superior to superstitious fears, to which a concern for his safety, as 
well as ihe strength of his mind, would doubtless contribute. " While he was sit- 
ting, one night," Tradition reports, " by a small table, with a light," engaged in the 
perusal of Buchanan's Latin version of the Psalms, his eye was suddenly attracted 
to a human skull at his feet, which, on more minute observation, appeared to move 
slightly, and at short intervals. Although of strong mind, and convinced that it was 
either the effect of optical delusion, or that of an imagination powerfully acted upon 
by the objects around him, still he was not a little perplexed how to settle the ques- 
tion in his own mind ; and, continuing to observe it with increasing interest, the 
motion, at last became so obvious, that the skull seemed as if animated, and left no 
subterfuge for his incredulity. The knight, however — with a coolness and compo- 
sure which did credit to his philosophy, and resolved to ascertain, by still more 
palpable evidence, the actual state of the matter — applied the point of his cane to 
the ghastly relic, and, by a sudden jerk, turned it over. This done, the nervous 
suspense was instantly relieved, and a mouse, that had been banqueting in the 
once warm brain of some departed Yorick, sprang from its burrow, and left the 
knight to exclaim, in words suited to the occasion — 

1 To what base uses we may return, Horatio !' " 

— Beatlie's Scotland, Illustrated, vol. i., p. 25 " There is a similar story," says the 
same writer, "which we have heard somewhere abroad — and known, perhaps, to 
some of our readers — which states, that in a domestic chapel, belonging to a certain 
chateau, a mysterious sound was heard nightly for a considerable time, to the great 
alarm and annoyance of the inmates, and ultimately discovered to proceed from a 
skull, which performed a rotary march along the floor of the chancel — resting, and 
recommencing the movement at short intervals. The construction at first put on 
this phenomenon is obvious: but the secret spring was not discovered fur some 
time ; till the skull becoming stationary, was found, on examination, to contain a rat, 
which had so greatly increased in bulk, during its residence in the deserted temple 
of genius, that the porch through which it first entered refused the same means of 
retreat. It was, therefore, during the hard struggle for emancipation, that the re- 
fractory skull was thrown into such wonderful attitudes ; while the rat. it may be 
added.'was suffered, from superstitious motives, to retain possession of his unhal- 
lowed tenement, till a rigid fast, having succeeded to days of feasting, should enable 
him to make his exit as he had made his entrance, and leave him once more ' as 
poor as a church rat.' " 

* Lady Murray, as we have 9tated in the text, says that he had no light, but he may occasionally have had 



43G THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

a drawing-out bed, in one of the rooms on a ground floor, of 
which Lady Grisell kept the key. She, and their confidential 
servant, James Winter, before-mentioned, labored hard in the 
night-time in making a hole in the earth, after they had lifted the 
wooden floor. The way in which they proceeded was by scratch- 
ing up the earth with their hands, being afraid lest, had they dug 
it with any instrument, the noise might have created alarm, and 
led to a discovery. So laborious and persevering was Grisell at 
this task, that she left not a nail upon her fingers ; and, as the 
earth was dug out, she assisted Winter in carrying it in a sheet, 
on his back, and in casting it out at the window, into the garden. 
"Winter next constructed a box, at his own house, of sufficient 
size for her father to lie in, with a bed and bedclothes ; and he 
bored holes in the box for the free admission of air. To accom- 
plish all this was a work of considerable time ; but when it was 
accomplished, the mind of Grisell was greatly lightened, and she 
thought herself the most secure and happy creature alive. The 
only fear she and her mother had was, that, as the hole was un- 
derground, water might flow into the box ; and, to ascertain 
whether or not this might be the case, they gave it the trial of a 
month ; during which time, Grisell having examined it every 
day, and finding no water in it, her father ventured home, trust- 
ing to this for safety. 

But after he had been at home for a week or two, during 
which time the hole was daily examined as usual, Grisell, one 
day on lifting the boards, observed the bed to bounce to the top, the 
box being full of water. At this she was greatly alarmed, and 
almost fainted, it being then the only place they knew, in which 
her father could find shelter. Her father, however, with great 
composure said to his lady and her, that he saw they must tempt 
Providence no longer, and that he ought now to leave them, and 
seek refuge in a foreign land. In this resolution he was con- 
firmed by the news which the carrier brought from Edinburgh, 
that Robert Baillie of Jerviswood had, the day before, been exe- 
cuted at the cross of Edinburgh, and that all were sorry for his 
death, though they durst not show it. All intercourse by letters 
being then dangerous, this was the first intimation Sir Patrick 
and his family had received of the fate of their beloved 
friend ; and it gave a greater shock to their feelings, from its 
being altogether unexpected. Preparations were immediately 
made for his departure ; and Grisell wrought incessantly, night 
and day, in making such alterations on his garments as would 
serve the more effectually to disguise him. It was then neces- 



LADY BAILLIE OF JERVISWOOD. 437 

sary to trust their grieve, John Allan, who fainted, when told that 
his master was in the house, and that he behooved, early next 
morning, to set out with him, and accompany him into England ; 
pretending, to the rest of the servants, that he was going to 
Morpeth fair, at which he had got orders to sell some horses. 
The parting between Sir Patrick and his family was sorrowful 
indeed ; but after he was fairly gone, though deprived of his so- 
ciety, and ignorant of what calamities might befall either him or 
themselves, they were greatly relieved in mind, and even happy 
in thinking that he was on the way to the land of safety. On 
the morning on which he started, he made a narrow escape : a 
party of troopers sent to apprehend him, having come to the house 
not long after he had left it, and searched it very closely. Nor 
was it less providential that his servant, who was riding at some 
distance behind him, had missed him before crossing the Tweed ; 
for during that time, the party, having probably, when at the 
house, heard the sound of horses running, suspecting the truth, 
followed and came upon the servant ; but they had left him before 
he again fell in with his master. Sir Patrick reached London 
in safety, and then went to France ; whence, after a short stay, 
he proceeded to the Netherlands, and thence to Holland. The 
course of his road he thus describes, in his narrative of Argyll's 
expedition : " So soon as I got upon the continent, I stayed but 
short [time] in France, but spent some weeks in Dunkirk, Os- 
tend, Bruges, and other towns in Flanders and Brabant, where I 
traversed before I came to Brussels ; whither, [as] soon as I 
heard that he resided there, I went to converse with the duke of 
Monmouth, but he was gone ihence to the Hague ; which led 
me, after waiting some time for him, in expectation of his return, 
on to Antwerp, and so to Holland."* 

Meanwhile, proceedings are instituted by the government 
against him. On the 13th of November, 1684, the lord advocate 
was ordered by the council to pursue him for treason. On the 
2Gth of January, 1685, he was denounced a rebel, and put to 
the horn, and all his lands, heritages, goods, and gear, forfeited 

* The Marchmont Papers, vol. iii., p. 2. Lady Murray is incorrect when, in giv- 
ing an account of his route on the continent at this time, she says that "from Lon- 
don, he went to France, and travelled from Bourdeaux to Holland, on foot." Craw- 
ford, in his Lives and Characters of the Officers of the Crown and of the State in Scot- 
land, is also mistaken when, in speaking of this same journey, he says, that after 
getting beyond sea, Sir Patrick "lived a while at Geneva, whence he came 
down to Holland, where he waited on the prince of Orange." Both Lady Murray 
and Crawford seem to confound the course of road which Sir Patrick took on the 
continent on his escape at this time, with that which he took on his escape after 
the failure of Argyll's expedition. See Note 4 on page '138. 

37* 



438 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

to his majesty's use, for not compearing before the council, to 
answer to the false charge of" contriving the death of his majesty, 
and the duke, his brother, overturning the government, converse 
with rebels, and concealing of treason." And, on the 28th of 
January, the privy council gave orders to secure his goods and 
rents, to be made forthcoming for his majesty's use.* 

He had not been long in Holland when the news of the death 
of Charles II. reached him. On this intelligence, the Scottish 
and English exiles resident there, who had before been concert- 
ing measures for the deliverance of their country from tyranny 
and popery, becoming now more alarmed than ever, from their 
personal knowledge of the duke of York, who was about to suc- 
ceed to the throne, matured a plan for the invasion of England, 
under the duke of Monmouth, and of Scotland, under the earl of 
Argyll. In this conspiracy, Sir Patrick was a leading man, and 
he accompanied the earl of Argyll in his expedition to Scotland. 
After Argyll was taken prisoner, and his forces were completely 
dispersed, Sir Patrick found an asylum in the house of a partic- 
ular friend, Mr. Montgomery, the laird of Langshaw, in Ayrshire. 
It also appears that he was concealed at Kilwinning by " that 
eminent religious lady," Eleonore Dunbar, aunt to the then earl 
of Eglinton, for several weeks in an empty house, till he got out 
of the country. t It was in this retreat that he composed his 
interesting narrative of the leading events of Argyll's invasion. 
Leaving Kilwinning, he found an opportunity of safely crossing 
over to Ireland, first reaching Dublin, whence he embarked for 
Bourdeaux, a large city in France. | Having remained some 
months in France, he next travelled to Geneva on foot,|| and, after 
remaining there for some time, went on foot to Rotterdam, and 
ultimately took up his residence at Utrecht. In these peregrina- 
tions, he assumed the character of a surgeon ; and, being able to 
bleed, he always carried lancets on his person. Even after 
taking up his residence in Holland, though living under the im- 
mediate protection of the prince of Orange, and honored with the 

1 Wodrow's History, vol. iv., p. 226. t Ibid., p. 312. 

t Crawford's Lives and Characters, &e. 

|| That he was at Bourdeaux in France, and Geneva, when escaping from Scot- 
land, at this time, is evident from his letters, printed at the end of Lady Murray's 
memoirs of her parents. His first letter from Bourdeaux was written November 
15,1685. There is also a letter dated January 13, 1686, another dated two daya, 
and another four days after, all which appear to have been written from that city. 
There are also two l.-tters dated Geneva, the one on May 17, and the other on June 
12, 1686. His letter from Bourdeaux of January 13, shows that he gave himself out 
there as a surgeon. He si^ns that letter as Peter Wallace, and it was as Dr. 
"Wallace, that Captain Burd. who travelled with him on foot a part of the way from 
France to Holland, knew him. 



LADY BAILLIE OF JERVISWOOD. 439 

personal friendship of that prince, who, looking on him as a 
confessor for the protestant religion and the liberties of his 
country, treated him with a very particular respect, he judged it 
expedient to continue to keep up his assumed character as a 
medical gentleman. After his arrival in that country, he sent to 
his lady his narrative of Argyll's expedition, formerly referred 
to, which is written in the form of a letter to her, and which, 
though it was written in Scotland, he had not found, while there, 
a convenient opportunity of sending to her. This narrative he 
begins as follows : — 

" My dear Heart :* Since I can have small hope of seeing 
you any more, or enjoying the pleasure of conversing with you, 
a thing wherein as now I more than ever discern my happiness 
on this earth did much consist, not knowing how long God will 
preserve me from the hands of mine enemies, who hunt earnestly 
after my life, have set a rate upon my head, and done otherwise 
what they can to cut off from me all ways of escaping their fury ; 
I found myself obliged, on many accounts, public and my own, 
to spend some time, in giving to the nation, and my friends and my 
family, some account of the matters I have of late had hand in, 
and of myself ; that the affair chiefly, many worthy persons therein 
concerned, and I, may not by ignorant, or false representations, 
be prejudged or discredited ; and there is none to whom I can 
address it so duly as you, or so safely ; for though this mock par- 
liament have made it, by their forfaulting me, very dangerous for 
others, yet you may with somewhat more safety receive a letter 
from me ; also none will take so much care of dispersing the 
contents as I think you will ; besides that there is none I can be 
more obliged to satisfy than you by it ; and for these purposes I 
recommend it to your care and discretion."! 

Sir Patrick's estate having been forfeited to the crown, Grisell, 
after he had left the country, went to London, by sea, with her 
mother ; whose object, in undertaking that journey, was to en- 
deavor to obtain from government an allowance out of her hus- 
band's estate, for herself and her ten children. They waited long 
in London, and were assisted in their endeavors by many good 

* " This paper was addressed to his wife from Holland — Note, in Rose's Obser- 
■vations in Fox's History. There is a second copy of this Narrative, apparently in 
the handwriting of Alexander, earl of Marchmout, which is headed as follows: — 
'Letter to D Gii elle Kar, from her husband, Sir Patrick Hume, in anno 1685, 

wryten from Kilwinning, where he lurked at the time, by the kind favor of Lady 

Montgomerie. sister to the earl of Eglinton. and spouse of Dunbar, younger of 

Baldoon, taken from a copy wryten of his own hand, which is yet amongst his 
papers.' "—Note of Editor of The Marchmout Papers. 

t The Marchmout Papers, vol. iii., p. 2. 



440 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

friends, from whom they met with much kindness and civil,.;/, 
as Lord William Russell's family, Lord Wharton's, and others, 
but all she could obtain was, according to Lady .Murray, only 
about one hundred and fifty pounds per annum.* This matter 
being settled, they returned to Scotland to prepare for going over 
to Holland to Sir Patrick, who sent for them, and they all went 
over together, with the exception of Grisell's sister, Julian, whose 
ill health unfitted her for such a journey. Grisell afterward re- 
turned from Holland by herself, to bring over Julian, when her 
health was in some measure recruited, to join the rest of the 
family. She was at the same time intrusted with the manage- 
ment of some of her father's business, and got instructions to 
collect as much of the debts due to him as possible. " All this 
she performed with her usual discretion and success, though not 
without encountering adventures that would have completely 
overwhelmed the resources of most young ladies of her age and 
rank" in our day. Her sister Julian was still so very weak, as 
to require the attendance of a nurse during the whole of the 
voyage, which happened to be very tedious, and in which they 
encountered a severe storm, the terrors of which were aggravated 
by the brutality of the captain of the vessel. Grisell had bar- 
gained for the cabin bed, and Avas very well provided in provis- 
ions and other necessary things. Three or four other ladies had 
also agreed with the captain lor the same bed; and a dispute 
arose between these ladies in the cabin, as to who should have 
the bed, in which, however, Grisell took no part, and a gentleman 
present bade her let the disputants settle the matter between 
them ; for, said he, " You will see how it will end." Two of 
the ladies went into the cabin bed, and the rest found a bed as 
they best could ; while Grisell and her sister lay upon the floor, 
with a bag of books, which she was carrying to her father, for 
their pillow. They had not lain long, when the captain of the 
vessel coming down to the cabin, voraciously devoured their 
whole provisions. He then said to the two ladies in the cabin 
bed, " Turn out, turn out ;"' and, stripping before them, lay down 
in the bed himself. But a terrible storm arising, which required 
his attendance and labor on deck to save the ship, he had soon 
to rise, and they saw no more of him till they landed at the Brill. 

* Sir Patrick's estate was afterward, by the king's letter, dated of 168G, 

gifted to Kenneth, earl of Seafortb, under several reservations mentioned, one of 
which was. that he be " bound to pay the young Lady Polwarth's jointure, conform 
to her contract of marriage with the said Sir Patrick Hume, and the additional join- 
ture thereafter granted unto her ; boih exteuding to three thousand merks Scots 
money,'' that is, £166, 13s., id, sterling. — The Marchmont Papers, vol. iii., p. 67. 



LADY BAILLIE OF JERVISWOOD. 441 

From the Brill they set out the same night, on foot, for Rotterdam, 
in company with a gentleman who came over at the same time, 
to take refuge in Holland from the persecution which was raging 
in Scotland, and who was of great service to them. The night 
was cold, wet, and disagreeable, and the roads were very bad ; 
Julian, in consequence of her previous ill health, and being only 
a girl, was not well able to travel, and soon lost her shoes in the 
mud, upon which Grisell carried her on her back the rest of the 
way, the gentleman kindly carrying their small luggage. On 
arriving at Rotterdam, they found their eldest brother Patrick 
and their father waiting for them, to convey them to Utrecht, 
where the family resided ; and no sooner did she reach home, 
than, in the midst of her beloved parents, sisters, and brothers, 
she forgot all her hardships, and felt the utmost contentment and 
happiness. 

They lived three years and half in Holland, and, during that 
time, Grisell made a second voyage to Scotland, about her father's 
worldly affairs. Her father, to escape detection, did not stir abroad, 
and, as has been previously said, still continued to assume the 
character of a surgeon, passing under the name of Dr. Wallace ; 
though it was well known, by the Scottish exiles and their friends, 
who he was. Finding their greatest comfort at home, and their 
house being a place of constant resort to the presbyterian refu- 
gees, of whom at that time, there was a great number in Hol- 
land, they were particularly desirous of having a good house ; 
and they rented one at nearly a fourth part of their whole annual 
income. From the smallness of their income, they could not 
afford to keep a servant, having only, besides themselves, a little 
girl to wash the dishes ; so that the duties of the kitchen, and, 
indeed, the management of the whole household establishment, 
devolved on Grisell ; for which, from her active and industrious 
habits, she was well qualified, and by which she proved a great 
blessing to her parents, brothers, and sisters. During the whole 
time of their residence in Holland, a week did not pass in which 
she did not sit up two nights engaged in some necessary house- 
hold occupation. " She went to market, Avent to the mill to have 
their corn ground, which it seems is the way with good mana- 
gers there, dressed the linen, cleaned the house, made ready the 
dinner, mended the children's stockings and other clothes, made 
what she could for them, and, in short, did everything." Her 
sister Christian, who was a year or two younger, had no turn for 
business, but had good talents for music, and was full of vivacity 
and humor. Out of their small income, her parents bought, at a 



412 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

trifling price, a harpsichord, which turned out to be an excellent 
instrument ; and in the musical performances of Christian, who 
both played and sung well, her father and mother, and the rest 
of the family, who were fond of music, found an agreeable relax- 
ation in their vacant hours. Grisell had the same talents for 
music as her sister, and was equally fond of it ; but the manage- 
ment of household affairs devolving on her, she had less leisure 
for indulging in that amusement. The performance of these domes- 
tic offices was to her, however, a labor of love ; and so far was 
she from envying or upbraiding her sister, who was exempted from 
the toil and drudgery to which she had to submit, that many 
jokes used to pass between them about their different occupa- 
tions. Nor had she any good ground for wishing to exchange 
occupations with her sister. '" It is more blessed to minister. 
than to be ministered unto,' said the most perfect character that 
ever appeared in the human form. Could any young person, of 
ever such a listless and idle disposition, not entirely debased by 
selfishness, read of the different occupations of Lady Grisell 
Baillie and this sister of hers, nearly of her own age, whose time 
was mostly spent in reading or playing on a musical instrument, 
and wish, for one moment, to have been the last-mentioned lady, 
rather than the other ?"* Every morning, before six o'clock, 
Grisell lighted her father's fire in his study, after which she 
awoke him, for he was always a good sleeper ; a blessing, among 
others, which she inherited from him. She then prepared for 
him warm small beer, with a spoonful of bitters in it — a beverage 
which he continued to take every morning, as soon as he got up, 
during the whole of his life. She next got the children dressed, 
and brought them all into his room ; where he taught them the 
different branches of education, the Latin, French, or Dutch lan- 
guages, geography, writing, reading, or English, according to 
their ages ; and his lady taught them such departments of learn- 
ing, and such accomplishments, as belong to the province of the 
female teacher. In this useful and interesting way, were Sir 
Patrick Hume and his lady employed during the whole period 
of their residence in Holland; their outward circumstances be- 
ing such, that they could not afford to put their children to school. 
Grisell, when she had some spare time, took a lesson with the 
rest in French and Dutch, and also amused herself with music. 
"I have now," says her daughter, Lady Murray, "a book of 
songs, of her writing, when there ; many of them are interrupted, 
half writ, some broke off in the middle of a sentence." 
* Joanna Bailiie's Metrical Legends of Exalted Characters, Preface, p. xxxii. 



LADY BAILLIE OF JERVISWOOD. 443 

Whether this collection, which is probably now lost, consisted 
of songs altogether of her own composition or not, it is not said. 
But a song of her composition, which affords a favorable speci- 
men of her talents in this species of writing, has been long in 
print, viz. : " Were na my heart licht I wad dee," and it may 
gratify the reader to see a copy of it here : — 

" There was ance a may, and she loo'd na men, 
She biggit her bonny bower down in yon glen ; 
But now she cries dool ! and a-well-a day ! 
Come down the green gate, and come here away. 
But now 6he cries, &c. 

" When bonny young Johnny came o'er the sea, 
He said he saw naething sae lovely as me ; 
He hecht me baith rings and mony braw things ; 
And were na my heart licht I wad dee. 
He hecht me, &c. 

" He had a wee titty that loo'd na me, 
Because I was twice as bonny as she ; 
She raised such a pother 'twixt him and his mother, 
That were na my heart licht I wad dee. 
She raised, &c. 

" The day it was set and the bridal to be, 
The wife took a dwam, and lay down to dee ; 
She roained and she grained out o' dolour and pain, 
Till he vowed he never wad see me again. 
She mained, &c. 

" His kin was for ane o' a higher degree, 
Said, What had he to do with the like of me ? 
Albeit 1 was bouny, I was nae for Johnny : 
And were na my heart licht I wad dee. 
Albeit I was bonny, &c. 

" They said I had, neither cow nor calf, 
Nor dribbles o' drink rins throw the draff, 
Nor pickles o' meal rins throw the mill-ee : 
And were na my heart licht I wad dee. 
Nor pickles, &c. 

" His titty she was baith wylie and slee, 
She spied me as I came o'er the lea ; 
And then she ran in and made a loud din : 
Believe your am een, an 3*e trow na me. 
And then she ran in, Sec. 

" His bonnet stood aye fu' round on his brow ; 

His auld ane looked as weel as some's new ; 

But now he lets t' wear ony gate it will hing, 

And casts himself dowie upon the corn bing. 

But now he, &c. 

" And now he gaes daundrin about the dykes, 
And a' he dow do is to hund the tykes ; 
The live-lang nicht he ne'er steeks his e'e ; 
And were na my heart licht I wad dee. 
The live lang nicht, &c. 



444 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

11 Were I young for thee, as I ha'e been, 
We should ha'e been gallopin down on yon green, 
And linkin it blythe on the lily-white lee ; 
And wow gin I were but young for thee ! 
And linkin it, <Ncc.'* 

" This," as has been justly said by a writer in the Scots Mag- 
azine, " is very good ; at once simple, lively, and tender."! 

The same writer expresses a hope that the book of songs in 
Grisell's handwriting, to which Lady Murray refers as being in 
her possession, may yet be recovered, and that it might afford 
further specimens of her poetical talents ; or, if not altogether of 
her own composition, might furnish some valuable additions to 
the lyric treasures by which Scotland has been so peculiarly dis- 
tinguished. He then adds, " We are enabled to subjoin one unpub- 
lished fragment of this description — supposed to be Lady Grisell's 
composition, from circumstantial evidence. It was lately discover- 
ed, in her handwriting, among a parcel of old letters, and enclosed 
in one of them, written about the time of her father's forfeiture, 
to her brother Patrick, then serving with Mr. Baillie in the prince 
of Orange's guards. The first two of the stanzas are copied from 
this MS. The others (in brackets) are subjoined, as an imper- 
fect attempt to complete the song in a similar style, but with a 
more direct reference to the situation of Lady Grisell and the 
family of Polwarth at that disastrous period." 

" O the ewe boghting'e bonnie. baitli e'ening and morn, 
When our blythe shepherds play en their bog reed and horn ; 
While we're* milking they're lilting baith pleasant and clear — 
But my heart 's like to break when I think of my dear! 

" O the shepherds take pleasure to blow on the horn, 
To raise up their flocks o' sheep soon i' the morn ; 
On the bonnie green banks they feed pleasant and free — 
But, alas ! my dear heart, all my sighing's for thee ! 

" [How blythe wi' my Sandy out o'er the brown fells, 
I ha'e followed the flocks through the fresh heather- bells! 
But now I sit greeting amang the lang broom, 
In the dowie green cleuchs whare the burnie glides down. 

" O wae to the traitors ! an' black be their fa', 
Wha banished my kind-hearted shepherd awa ! 
Wha banished my laddie ayont the wide sea, 
That aye was sae lael to bis country and me. 

" But the cruel oppressors shall tremble for fear, 
When the true-blue and orange in triumph appear ; 
And the star of the east leads them o'er the dark sea, 
Wi'J reedom to Scotland, and Sandy to me. "U 

* Ritson's Scottish Songs, voi. i., p. 128; and Chambers's Scottish Songs, vol. ii., 
p. 321. 

t Scots Magazine, New Series, for 1818, pp. 35, 36. J Ibid., pp. 435, 436. 



LADY BAILLIE OF JERVISWOOD. 445 

From these lively specimens of GriselPs lyric compositions, 
as well as from the whole of the preceding narrative, it was evi- 
dent that, in addition to her other good qualities, she was char- 
acterized by a buoyant animation of spirit, combined with a guile- 
lessness of soul which gave a great charm to her character, and 
made her universally beloved. In her history, and, indeed, in 
that of all her family, whose good humor and harmless pleasant- 
ry made their society so agreeable and so greatly courted, we 
perceive how erroneously presbytery and the covenant have often 
been represented as deadly enemies to innocent hilarity, and our 
presbyterian ancestors as the personification of austerity and mo- 
roseness. 

To her eldest brother Patrick, who was nearest to her own 
age, and who was brought up with her, Grisell was more strong- 
ly attached than to her other brothers or sisters. He and George 
Baillie (the son of Robert Baillie the martyr), her future hus- 
band, who was deprived of his father's estate which had been for- 
feited, and who was then in Holland, having been also obliged 
to take refuge in exile, served for some time as privates in the 
prince of Orange's guards, till more honorable and lucrative sit- 
uations were provided for them in the army, which was done be- 
fore the revolution. Grisell, who was always very neat in her 
own dress, felt an honest pride in seeing her brother neat and 
clean in his ; and it being the fashion, in those days, to wear lit- 
tle point cravats and cuffs, she sat up many a night to have them 
and his linens in as good order for him as any in the place. His 
dress was, indeed, one of the heaviest items in their expenses. 

Narrow and precarious as was the income of Sir Patrick and 
his family, they were distinguished for their kind-hearted hospi- 
tality. His house, as has* been said before, was much frequented 
by such of his countrymen, as, like himself, had taken refuge 
from persecution in Holland. And seldom did the family sit down 
to dinner, without having three, four, or five, of these refugees with 
them to partake of their humble repast. But Providence so re- 
markably blessed them in their basket and in their store, that 
they wanted for nothing which they really needed. And virtue 
being associated with adversity, they felt contentment and hap- 
piness ; a state of mind which was much promoted by their con- 
trasting the comfortable retreat they had found on a foreign shore, 
with the suffering condition of many of their presbyterian friends 
at home. " Many a hundred times," says Lady Murray, speak- 
ing of her mother, " I have heard her say, she could never look 
back upon their manner of living there, without thinking it a mir- 
38 



446 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

acle ; they had no want, but plenty of everything they desired, and 
much contentment, and [she] always declared it [to be] the most 
pleasant part of her life ; though they were not without their lit- 
tle distresses ; but to them they were rather jokes than griev- 
ances." Sir Patrick being a scholar, the professors and learned 
men of Utrecht were often visitants at his house, and the best 
entertainment he could give them was a glass of alabaster beer, 
which was a kind of ale better than the common. 

In exile, he continued to watch over the state of affairs in Scot- 
land, and discovered in William, prince of Orange, of whose 
talents and character he entertained the highest admiration, the 
future deliverer of his country. He had penetration enough to 
see, that the object aimed at in James VII. 's schemes of tolera- 
tion for dissenters, was under the disguise of benefiting them, 
to afford relief to papists, and ultimately to pave the way for the 
establishment of popery. Accordingly, in June, 1668, he ad- 
dressed from Utrecht a well-written and powerfully-reasoned 
letter, to his friend Sir William Denholm, who had been in Ar- 
gyll's expedition, to be communicated to the presbyterian minis- 
ters of Scotland, to put them on their guard against an insidious 
plan which was in agitation, to induce them to petition in favor 
of King James's deceptive measure for a toleration. " All I 
shall add," says he in the close, " is to wish protestants to see to 
it and not to be gulled by their enemies, not to misjudge their 
friends, and to be ever ready to do or to suffer, as God shall call 
them to it, for their interests of so high moment : pro Chriato et 
patria duke pcriculum."* 

At length the time of Britain's deliverance drew near. James 
VII. having, by his violent and infatuated policy to establish ar- 
bitrary power and popery in England, roused the indignation of 
the English people, William, prince of Orange, to save the lib- 
erties of Britain, made preparations for invading it. Grisell's 
father shared in the counsels of William ; and, along with his 
son Patrick and George Baillie, accompanied him in his enter- 
prise when the fleet was ready to sail. As was natural, she and 
the rest of the family felt deeply interested in the success of this 
undertaking. At first they were afflicted with anxious and mis- 
giving thoughts as to the issue, when William's whole fleet was 
scattered and driven back by a violent tempest. Having heard 
of this melancholy news, she herself, her mother, and her sister, 
" immediately came from Utrecht to Helvoetsluys, to get what 
information they could. The place was so crowded by people 
* The Marchmont Papers, vol. iii., p. 98. 



LADY BAILLIE OF JERVISWOOD. 447 

from all quarters, come for the same purpose, that her mother, 
she, and her sister, were forced to lie in the boat they came in ; 
and, for three days continually, to see coming floating in, beds, 
chests, horses, &c, that had been thrown overboard in their dis- 
tress. At the end of the third day, the prince, and some other 
ships came in ; but no account of the ship their friends were in. 
Their despair was great, but in a few days was relieved by their 
coming in safe, but with the loss of all their baggage, which, at 
that time, was no small distress to them."* 

When the fleet, on the damage made being repaired, set out 
again, the solicitude of Grisell, her mother, and the rest of the 
family, for its success, was more intense than ever. To hear of 
those embarked having safely landed in England, was the great- 
est joy they could picture to their minds. Of this they had soon 
the satisfaction of hearing; but the joy which such tidings, in 
ordinary circumstances, would have given them, was swallowed 
up by the sorrow into which they were plunged by the unex- 
pected loss of GriselFs sister, Christian, who, on the very day 
on which the welcome, news reached them, died suddenly of a 
sore throat, caught from her exposure in the damp, open boat, at 
Helvoetsluys. To Grisell, who was of strong and tender affec- 
tions, the loss of " the sister of her heart" was a great affliction. 
" When that happy news came," says Lady Murray, " it was no 
more to my mother than any occurrence she had not the least 
concern in ; for that very day her sister Christian died of a sore 
throat ; which was so heavy an affliction to both her and her 
mother, that they had no feeling for anvthing else ; and," adds 
Lady Murray, " often have I heard her say she had no notion of 
any other cause of sorrow but the death and affliction of those 
she loved ; and of that she was sensible to her last, in the most 
tender manner. She had endured many hardships, without being 
depressed by them ; on the contrary, her spirits and activity in- 
creased the more she had occasion for them ; but the death of 
her friends was always a load too heavy for her." 

Happily, the prince of Orange's undertaking was crowned 
with success. In England, all parties rallied around him — a 
very merciful providence for Scotland, which, wasted by a per- 
secution of twenty-eight years, was now lying under the iron 
wheel of despotism, crushed in spirit, and more hopeless of de- 
liverance, in so far as her own intrinsic power was concerned, 
than at any previous period of her history. But England, in 
saving herself, saved Scotland. When matters were all settled 
* Lady Murray's Narrative- 



448 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

in England, Grisell's brothers and sisters were sent home to 
Scotland, under the care of a friend ; Avhile she herself and her 
mother came over with the princess of Orange to London. The 
princess, now about to ascend the British throne, attracted by the 
engaging character and the peculiarly prepossessing personal 
appearance of Grisell,* wished to retain her near her person, as 
one of her maids of honor. But though this was a situation for 
which Grisell was well qualified, and to which many of her age 
would have been proud to have been elevated, she declined the 
appointment, preferring to go home with the rest of her family. 
The reader has already been informed of the youthful attach- 
ment which sprung up between her and George Baillie, within 
the walls of his father's prison ; and also that Baillie was a refu- 
gee in Holland at the time when she and her father's family were 
resident in that country. In their exile, their affection for each 
other increased, and they had their marriage always in view; 
though, from the circumstances in which they were then placed, 
neither of them having a shilling;, they deemed it unwise to make 
known their intentions to her parents, and were at no small pains 
to conceal their mutual passion from them. In the midst of her 
parents' troubles, she had offers of marriage from two gentlemen 
of fortune and good character, in her own neighborhood, in Scot- 
land, who had done nothing to incur the resentment of the gov- 
ernment ; and her parents, thinking these to be favorable oppor- 
tunities for her comfortable settlement in life, pressed her to 
marry one or other of these gentlemen. " She earnestly rejected 
both, but without giving any reason for it, though her parents 
suspected it ; and it was the only thing in which she ever dis- 
pleased or disobeyed them. These gentlemen were intimate and 
sincere friends to Mr. Baillie and her to the day of their death, 
and often said to them both she had made a much better choice 
in him ; for they made no secret of having made their addresses 
to her. Her parents were ever fond of George Baillie, and he 
was always with them. So great an opinion had they of him, 

* Her personal appearance is thus described by her daughter: "She was middle" 
sized, well made, clever in her person, very handsome, with a life and sweetness in 
her eyes very uncommon, and great delicacy in all her features ; her hair was chest- 
nut : and, to her last, had the finest complexion, with the clearest red in her cheeks 
and lips that could be seen in one of fifteen, which, added to her natural constitu- 
tion, might be owing to the great moderation she had in her diet throushout her 
whole life." Lady Murray adds: " Pottage and milk was her greatest feast, and 
by choice she preferred them to everj'thing, though nothing came wrong to her that 
others could eat. Water she preferred to any liquor, and though often obliged to 
take a glass of wine, she always did it unwillingly, thinking it hurt her, and did not 
like it." 



LADY BAILLIE OF JERVISWOOD. 449 

that he was generally preferred to any other, and trusted to go 
out with her, and take care of her, when she had any business 
to do. They had no objection but the circumstances he was in ; 
which had no weight with her, for she always hoped things 
would turn out at last as they really did ; and, if they did not, she 
was resolved not to marry at all." Having, after the revolution, 
been put in possession of his father's estate, which had been 
gifted to the duke of Gordon, Baillie made known to her parents 
the engagement between him and her ; and they were married 
at Redbraes castle, on September 17, 1692. At that time, her 
father (his political and personal troubles being now over) was 
in high favor with King William, and was enjoying in security 
that wealth and honor to which his sufferings in the cause of 
religion and liberty so well entitled him.* 

The fruits of Grisell's marriage with George Baillie were a 
son, Robert, born January 23, 1694, who died young ; and two 
daughters — Grisell, who was married August 26, 1710, to Sir 
Alexander Murray of Stanhope, Bart., M. P., and died without 
issue, June 6, 1759, aged sixty-seven ; and Rachel, born Febru- 
ary 23, 1696, married to Charles, Lord Binning (eldest son of 
Thomas, sixth earl of Haddington), and mother of Thomas, sev- 
enth earl of Haddington, George Baillie of Jerviswood, and other 
children.! 

Lady Grisell's marriage with Mr. Baillie was unusually happy. 
She indeed proved to him, in the words of the poet — 

"A guardian angel o'er his life presiding, 
Doubling his pleasures, and his cares dividing.*' 

* On the new order of things introduced at the revolution, he was nominated a 
member of the new privy council in Scotland, and in December, 1690, was created 
a Scottish peer by the title of Lord Polwarlh. In 1692, he was appointed principal 
sheriff of Berwickshire, and, in 169.3, one of the four extraordinary lords of session. 
In 1696, he was made lord chancellor of Scotland, the highest office in that king- 
dom ; iu less than a year after, he was created earl of Marchmont; and, in 1698, he 
w.is appointed lord high commissioner to represent the king's person in the session 
of parliament which met at Edinburgh in July that year. It is interesting to know 
that, in prosperity, this nobleman did not forget those who had befriended him in adver- 
sitv. " There is a family tradition which relates that, being obliged, in consequence 
of political persecution, to quit Redbraes house and cross the country, a little above 
Greenlaw, he met with a man of the name of Broomfield, the miller of Greenlaw 
mill, who was repairing a slap or breach in the mill-caul. Sir Patrick, addressing 
h'm by the occupation in which he was engaged, said, ' Slap, have you any money V 
upon which Broomfield supplied h : m with what was considered necessary for his 
p "espnt exigency. Sir Patrick, it is added, was obliged to pass over into Holland ; 
bat when he came back with King William, did not forget his former benefactor in 
need It is not stated whit return he made him, but the family was settled in a free 
house as long as they lived, and ever after retained the name of Slap." — New Sta- 
tistical Ai count of Scotland. 

t Douglas's Peerage, vol. ii., p. SI. 

38* 



450 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

Equally ardent and tender was his affection toward her, in whom 
he found combined the qualities of the " virtuous woman" whom 
Solomon's mother so happily describes, and whose " price is far 
above rubies." On her he left the sole charge of domestic af- 
fairs, and even in reference to matters of graver importance he 
placed great confidence in her judgment. " None could better 
judge," says her daughter, " than herself, what was most proper 
to be done upon any occasion ; of which my father was so con- 
vinced, that I have good reason to believe he never did anything 
of consequence through his whole life without asking her advice. 
She had a quickness of apprehension and sagacity that generally 
hit upon the fittest things to be done." Her daughter adds : 
" Though she had a quick and ready wit, yet she spoke little in 
company, but where she was quite free and intimate. She used 
often to wonder at a talent she met with in many, that could 
entertain their company with numberless words, and yet say 
nothing." 

In 1703, Lady Baillie lost her dear mother, who died at Edin- 
burgh, October 11, that year. On her dying bed, her mother, 
who retained her judgment to the last, was surrounded by all her 
children. At this scene, Lady Baillie, in the agony of her grief, 
had hid herself behind the curtain of the bed, so that her mother, 
in looking round upon them all, did not see her, upon which she 
said, " Where is Grisell ?" Lady Baillie immediately came near 
her mother, who, taking her by the hand, said, " My dear Grisell, 
blessed be you above all, for a helpful child have you been to 
me." — " I have often heard my mother," says Lady Murray, " tell 
this in floods of tears, which she was always in when she spoke 
of her mother at all." Great was the sorrow of the carl of March- 
mont, and of the whole family, on the death of this excellent wife 
and mother. During life, she had experienced great variety in 
her outward condition. But, in every situation, she was distin- 
guished by unpretending piety and unspotted virtue, united with 
great sweetness, composure, and equanimity of temper. So well 
disciplined had been her mind by adversity, that, when exalted 
to wealth and honor, none of her acquaintances, from the highest 
to the lowest, ever found that these had created any change in 
the temper of her mind. To her virtues and amiable qualities 
her husband has borne a very affecting testimony in an inscrip- 
tion he wrote on her bible, which he gave to his* daughter, Lady 
Baillie :— 

" Grisell Lady Marchmont, her book. To Lady Grisell Hume, 
Lady JervisAvood, my beloved daughter. My heart, in remem- 



LADY BAILLIE OF JERVISWOOD. 451 

brance of your mother, keep this bible, which is what she ordi- 
narily made use of. She bad been happy of a religious and vir- 
tuous education, by the care of virtuous and religious parents. 
She was of a middle stature, of a plump, full body ; a clear, ruddy 
complexion ; a grave, majestic countenance ; a composed, steady, 
and mild spirit ; of a most firm and equal mind, never elevated 
by prosperity, nor debased or daunted by adversity. She was a 
wonderful stay and support to me in our exile and trouble, and an 
humble and thankful partaker with me in our more prosperous 
condition ; in both which, by the blessing of God, she helped 
much to keep the balance of our deportment even. She was 
constant and diligent in the practice of religion and virtue, a care- 
ful observer of worship to God, and of her duties to her husband, 
her children, her friends, her neighbors, her tenants, and her ser- 
vants : so that it may justly be said, her piety, probity, virtue, and 
prudence, were without a blot or stain, and beyond reproach. As 
by the blessing of God she had lived well, so by his mercy, in 
the time of her sickness and at her death, there appeared many 
convincing evidences that the Lord took her to the enjoyment of 
endless happiness and bliss. She died, October 11, 1703, at 
Edinburgh, and was buried in my burying-place, near the Canon- 
gate church, where I have caused mark out a grave for myself 
close by hers, upon the left side, in the middle of the ground. 

" Marchmont." 

From her tender years, Lady Baillie had been a constant help 
and support to her father's family ; and even after she became 
the mother of a family herself, she was still useful to them in 
many respects. From the time that her brother Alexander, Lord 
Polwarth, went abroad in 1716 (in consequence of his appoint- 
ment, the year before, to be envoy extraordinary to the courts of 
Denmark and Prussia), and all the time he was at Copenhagen 
and Cambray, she had the whole management of his affairs, and 
the care of the education of his children. It may also be men- 
tioned, as an evidence of the care she continued to take of her 
father, that, during the last years of his life, which he passed 
at Berwick-upon-Tweed, she went to Scotland every alternate year 
to see him ; and the infirmities of old age unfitting him for taking 
the trouble of looking after his own affairs, she examined and 
settled his steward's accounts, which were often long and intri- 
cate. " Very unlike too many married women," says Joanna 
Baillie, " who, in taking upon them the duties of a wife and 
mother, suffer these to absorb every other ; and visit their father's 



452 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

house seldom, and as a stranger, who has nothing to do there but 
to be served and waited upon. If misfortune or disease come 
upon their parents, it is the single daughters only who seem to 
be concerned in all this. She who is a neglectful daughter, is 
an attentive wife and mother from a mean cause."* 'When in 
London, Lady Baillie regularly wrote every other post to her 
father, or to her sister, Lady Julian, who then lived with him. 
and watched over his declining years with affectionate care ; 
sent him the newspapers, and any new book or pamphlet which 
she thought would interest him. Amid the infirmities of old age, 
the good man retained all the kindly cheerfulness of his earlier 
days ; and this made his society delightful to the youngest of his 
descendants — the means both of improvement and of enjoyment. 
To join the useful with the agreeable in social intercourse, and 
indeed in the whole business of life, was a principle upon which 
he seems studiously to have acted ; and hence the device which 
is constantly found in his books and manuscripts : — 

" ' Omne tulit punctum, qui miscuit utile dulci.' H. D. A."t 

Even on his death-bed he could not resist his old propensity to 
joking. Sitting by his bedside, not many hours before he ex- 
pired, Lord Binning observed hirn smiling, and said, " My lord, 
what are you laughing at ?" To which the dying earl answered, 
" I am diverted to think what a disappointment the worms will 
meet with, when they come to me, expecting a good meal, and 
find nothing but bones!" He was much emaciated in body, and 
indeed he had always been a thin, clever man. None of his 
family were then in Scotland, except his daughter Lady Julian, 
who attended him, and his son-in-law, Lord Binning, who no 
sooner heard from Lady Julian of her father's illness, than he 
hastened to visit him, and continued with him till his death. He 
expired without a groan, and seemed to rejoice in the prospect 
of his departure. Lady Baillie had not the satisfaction of seeing 
him under his last illness. On hearing of his death,| she was 
deeply affected, though, from his advanced age, it was an event 
which could hardly take her by surprise. 

She met with another domestic affliction, w/hich she deeply 
felt, in the death of the amiable and accomplished Lord Bin- 

* Metrical Legends of Exalted Characters, p. 270. 

t The last three letters are a conraction fir Horace's " De Arte Poetica." Some- 
times he writes the quotation m .re briefly, thus : — 

"' Omne tulit punctum.' H D. A." 

— The Marchmont Papers. 

X He died in 1724, in the eighty-fourth year of his age. 



LADY BAILLIE OF JERVISWOOD. 453 

ning,* the husband of her daughter Rachel, in 1733. Having 
fallen into ill health, he went to Italy, for the benefit of the cli- 
mate, and, having lived at Naples for some time, he died there 
on January 30, that year, in the thirty-sixth year of his age, hav- 
ing borne his sufferings with the utmost patience, resignation, 
and even cheerfulness and good humor. To this nobleman she 
was as strongly attached as if he had been her own child, and 
she and her whole family accompanied him to Italy. They re- 
sided in Naples about sixteen months. 

On the death of Lord Binning, they went to Oxford, for the 
education of his children,! Thomas, afterward seventh earl of 
Haddington, and his two brothers. For Lord Binning's chil- 
dren, Lady Baillie had a strong affection. She was not without 
ambition of their rising to distinction in the world, " and omitted 
nothing she could devise to further them this way ; but yet, 
whenever she spoke about them, the great thing she expressed 
herself with most concern about was that they might become 
virtuous and religious men. "J: 

While resident in Oxford, she met with a trial, in the death of 
Mr. Baillie, which, perhaps, inflicted a heavier blow on her 
heart than any of the past afflictions of her life. He died there, 
on sabbath, August 6, 1738, after, an illness of only forty-eight 
hours, in the seventy-fifth year of his age. He had lived an 
eminently pious and exemplary life, and his latter end was peace. 
During the whole time of his illness, he was employed in breath- 
ing out prayers to his God and Savior, for his own salvation, and 
that of his family. He departed with a calm, serene countenance, 
and with scarce a groan. His body was sent home to be interred 
in his own burying-place, at Mellerstain ; attended, according 
to his own orders, which Lady Baillie was careful to have exe- 
cuted, only by his near relations, near neighbors, and his own 
tenants. Under this bereavement, it was difficult for her to bear 
up. From the peculiar tenderness of her feelings, she was al- 
ways extremely susceptible to the emotions of sorrow on the loss 
of friends. But when, in her old age, she was bereft of the ex- 
cellent companion to whom she had been so long united, whom 

* Like Lady Baillie, Lord Binning possessed an elegant talent for song-writing. 
He was the author of Pastoral Ballads. His ballad beginning "Did ever swain a 
nymph adore," has long been well known. — Douglas's Peerage, vol. i., p. 684. Kit- 
eon's Collection of Scottish Songs, vol. i., p. 73. 

t He had "committed and recommended to Mr. Baillie's care the education 
of his children, and said he needed give no directions about it, since he was to do 
it. What he wished most earnestly was to have them good and honest men, which 
he knew would also be Mr. Baillie's chief care." — Lady Murray's Narrative. 

t Lady Murray's Narrative. 



454 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

she called " the best of husbands, and delight of my life for forty- 
eight years ;" and as to whom she often declared, " that they never 
had a shadow of a quarrel or misunderstanding, no, not for a mo- 
ment ;" it is not surprising that she was almost overwhelmed by 
the stroke, and that hers was a sorrow which could not altogether 
be assuaged on this side of the grave. The account which Lady 
Murray gives of her mother's sorrow under this loss is very 
touching. " When she lost him, her affliction was so great that 
it threw her into a dangerous fit of illness, which, with joy, she 
would have allowed herself to sink under, had she not thought 
her life was still necessary for the happiness of her family; as 
Sir Alexander Murray then threatened, by long letters writ to us, 
to give us a great deal of trouble and disturbance, which could 
not well take place unless he outlived her. . . . She stayed near 
two years longer at Oxford, as long as it was thought fit for her 
grandsons, though the most melancholy, disagreeable place she 
could be in, far from friends, and no business to amuse, or take 
off her thoughts from her heavy loss ; so that the sedentary life 
she led, which she had never been used to, again threw her into 
a long and dangerous fit of illness, in which her life was despaired 
of by every one." And after stating that her mother and the whole 
family came, in 1740, to London, and thence immediately to 
Scotland, Lady Murray adds, " Everything at home so continu- 
ally renewed her grief, that scarce a day passed without her 
bursting out in tears ; though she did her utmost to command her- 
self, not to give us pain, yet it often overcame her One 

day, looking round and admiring the beauties of the place, she 
checked herself, burst out in tears, and said, ' What is all this 
to me, since your father does not see and enjoy it!' Such re- 
flections she often had, and neither amusements nor business 
could put them out of her thoughts. As I almost always put her 
to bed, I can declare I never saw her lie down but with a deep 
groan, and generally tears, not soon to be pacified ; nor could she 
be persuaded to take another room, choosing everything that 
could put her in mind of him. She had some hundreds of his 
letters, he having been often at London, absent from her for 
many months at a time, and never missed writing one single 
post. She had carefully preserved them all, and set about read- 
ing of them ; which put her into such fits of grief and crying, 
quite sunk and destroyed her, that we thought it would kill her. 
She one day said she was ashamed to be alive, after losing one 
that had writ her such letters, and with whom she could have 
been contented to live on the top of a mountain, on bread and 



LADY BAILUE OF JERVISWOOD. 455 

water ; and had no pleasure in anything but for his sake. 
Happy, said she, had it been for her, if she had constantly 
read over his letters, and governed her whole actions by them. 
She intended sealing them up in a bag, and bade me see they 
were buried in the coffin with her. I begged to read some of 
them, which she allowed me ; and I earnestly entreated they 
might not be buried, but preserved for the sake of his posterity, 
and they are now in my custody. In nothing I ever saw did I 
find so much to instruct, to admire, to please ; they are a true 
picture of his heart; full of the most tender and condescending 
affection, just remarks and reflections, true goodness, submission 
to Providence, entire resignation and contentment, without cant, 
superstition, severity, or uncharitableness to others ; constant 
justness to all, and frugality in his private affairs, for the sake 
of his family." 

In September, 1744, it being thought proper that her grand- 
sons should go to London, she resolved that she herself and her 
whole family should go with them ; her object being, as they 
were just entering into the world, to watch over them, and aid 
them by her counsel and experience ; though she owned it to be 
her desire, as was most natural, to end her days in quiet. At 
the same time she felt persuaded that she should not return, and 
desired her children, in the event of her dying there, to bring 
home her body to be buried beside that of her husband. 

" The rebellion of 1745 was a great affliction to her ; the dis- 
tress of her country and friends went near her heart, and made 
great impression on her health and spirits. Nobody could be 
more sensibly touched with the desolation of this poor country ; 
yet she never expressed herself with bitterness nor resentment 
against the authors of it, and could not bear to hear others do so. 
She said it was the judgment of God upon us, and too well de- 
served by all ranks ; therefore we ought to submit to it, and en- 
deavor to avert it by other methods than railing and ill will at 
those who were the instruments of it." Her religion was emi- 
nently free from a censorious and uncharitable spirit toward 
others. Lady Murray, after stating that her mother " was much 
devoted to piety, and the service of God," adds, " People who 
exercise themselves much this way, are often observed to con- 
tract a morose way of thinking concerning others, which she 
had no tincture of. Her religion improved her in charity, and 
patience for other people's failings, and forgiveness of injuries ; 
and, no doubt, was one great source of that constant cheerfulness 
she was so remarkable for." 



456 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

While in London, she seldom went ahroad, except to visit 
Lady Stanhope. But, in her own children and grandchildren, 
she enjoyed the most agreeable society at home ; and she also 
found much pleasure in the frequent visits paid to her by her old 
friends and acquaintances, as well as by 'several new ones, who 
thought no time better spent than in her company. At last, the 
time drew near when she must go the way of all the earth. An 
epidemical cold being prevalent in the English capital, she 
caught the disease, which, after hanging about her for some time, 
terminated fatally. She was, however, confined to her bed only 
a few days, and there was no aberration of mind, to the last. 
Two days before her death, her family being all in the room be- 
side her, she said, " My dears, read the last chapter of the Prov- 
erbs ; you know what it is." " To have her grandsons happily 
married," says Lady Murray, " lay near her heart ; and I ima- 
gine it was with regard to that she said it. I think it is a very 
strong picture of herself; and if ever any deserve to have it said 
of them, she does." Some may imagine, that thoughts respect- 
ing the happy marriage of her grandsons was scarcely exercise 
appropriate for a deathbed. But this would be to take a very 
imperfect and contracted view of the Christian exercise appro- 
priate in such circumstances. No doubt the greatest questions 
to every man and woman when about to enter eternity, and ap- 
pear at God's judgment-seat, are, " Am I at peace with God V 
" Have I obtained that renewed heart which is indispensable to 
admission into heaven ?" " Am I trusting, not to my own good 
works, or virtues, but exclusively to the Divine righteousness of 
Christ ; an interest in which is equally indispensable to admis- 
sion into heaven ?" But while all true Christians will, in the 
prospect of death, give their chief thoughts to these subjects, 
they may, at the same time, in perfect consistency with this, 
feel an interest in whatever contributes to the well-being, both 
temporal and eternal, of their friends whom they are to leave be- 
hind them in the world ; and to this ahappy marriage relation, which 
is greatly conducive to the promotion of both virtue and piety, 
unquestionally contributes. The next day Lady Baillie called for 
Lady Murray, to whom she gave directions about some few 
things ; and expressed it as her desire to be carried home and 
interred beside her dear husband ; but said, that perhaps it might 
be too much trouble and inconvenience to them at that season. 
She therefore left it to Lady Murray to do as she pleased ; " but," 
says she, " in a black purse in my cabinet you will find money 
sufficient to do it." This money she had kept by her for that 



LADY BAILLIE OF JERVISWOOD. 457 

purpose, that whenever her death took place, her children might 
be able, without being straitened, to carry her mortal remains to 
Scotland, to be deposited in the same resting-place with those 
of her husband. Having said this, she added, " I have now no 
more to say or do ;" tenderly embraced Lady Murray, and laid 
down her head upon the pillow, after which she spoke little. 
True Christians, of strong and warm affections, have often antici- 
pated with delight, the recognition of their beloved pious friends 
and relatives in heaven, expecting to derive, from this source, no 
small portion of their future felicity. Lady Baillie always ex- 
pressed her assurance, that she and Mr. Baillie, who had so long 
lived together on earth, as heirs of the grace of life, would meet 
together and know one another in a better world ; and she often 
said after his death, that without that belief she could not have 
supported herself. This reflection was cheering to her even 
when dying. " Now, my dear," said she to Lady Murray, " I 
can die in peace, and desire nothing but to be where your father 
is." She died on December 6, 1746, surrounded by her whole 
family, who showed a lively sense of what they lost when she 
breathed her last. According to her desire, her body was con- 
veyed from London to Scotland ; and, on Christmas day, Decem- 
ber 25, which was her birth-day, was laid by the side of her 
husband in the monument of Mellerstain. She was buried in 
the same manner in which, according to his own orders, she 
herself had directed his funeral — near relations, near neighbors, 
and her own tenants, only, being present. 

Lady Baillie had been universally respected while living, and 
she died universally lamented. In her death, many lost not. only 
a friend, but a benefactor ; for she was very charitable to the dis- 
tressed ; remembering what she herself had suffered ; nor was 
her beneficence confined to those of her own way of thinking.* 
The esteem in which she was held, was testified by the many 
letters of condolence, which, on the event, her family received 
from all quarters. Lord Cornbury, writing to Lady Hervey on 
her death, says : " Indeed, I am sorry that we shall see our good 
old friend no more. I am sorry that we shall partake no more 
in the society of that hospitality, that benevolence, that good 
humor, that good sense, that cheerful dignity, the result of so 
many virtues which were so amiable in her, and what did so 
much honor to humanity ; and I am very sorry for what those 

* •' The very last week of her life she sent a servant to Newgate to inquire after 
one she heard was there in distress, and to give him some relief, though she had 
never seen him, but knew his friends." — Lady Murray's Narrative, 
39 






458 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

must suffer at present, whom she had bred up to have affections, 
and who had so justly so much for her.' Lady Baillie in truth, 
possessed a combination of qualities not often to be met with in 
the same person ; and which would have adorned the most ex- 
alted station. " It appears to me," says Joanna Baillie, " that a 
more perfect female character could scarcely be imagined ; for, 
while she is daily exercised in all that is useful, enlivening, and 
endearing, her wisdom and courage, on every extraordinary and 
difficult occasion, gave a full assurance to the mind, that the de- 
voted daughter of Sir Patrick Hume, and the tender helpmate 
of Baillie, would have made a most able and magnanimous 
queen."* The inscription engraven on marble upon her monu- 
ment, which was written by one who knew her well, Sir Thomas 
Burnet, one of the judges of the court of common pleas, and 
youngest son of Bishop Burnet, summarily records the leading 
and most singular events of her life, and gives a full, compre- 
hensive, and withal a just view of her character. This inscrip- 
tion, with which we shall conclude our sketch, is as follows : — 

HERE LIETH 

The Right Honorable Lady Grisei.l Baillie, 

wife of Geokge Baillie of Jerviswood, Esq., 

eldest daughter 

of the Right Honorable, Patrick, Earl of Marchmont; 

a pattern to her sex, and an honor to her country. 

She excelled in the character of a daughter, a wife, a mother. 

While an infant, t 

at the hazard of her own, she preserved her father's life ; 

who under the rigorous persecution of arbitrary power, 

sought refuge in the close confinement of a tomb, 

where he was nightly supplied with necessaries, conveyed by her, 

with a caution far above her years, 

a courage almost above her sex ; 

a real iustance of the so much celebrated Roman charity. 

She was a shining example of conjugal affection. 

that knew no dissension, felt no decline, 

during almost a fifty years" union ; 

the dissolution of which she survived from duty, not choice. 

Her conduct as a parent 

was amiable, exemplary, successful, 

to a degree not well to be expressed, 

without mixing the praises of the dead with those of the living ; 

who desire that all praise, bat of her, should be silent. 

At different times she managed the affairs 

of her father, her husband, her family, her relations, 

with unwearied application, with happy economy, 

as distant from avarice as from prodigality. 

Christian piety, love of her country, 

zeal for her friends, compassion for her enemies, 

cheerfulness of spirit, pleasantness of conversation, 

dignity of mind, 

* Metrical Legends of Exalted Characters, Preface, p. xxvi. t See p. 433, Note. 



DUCHESS OF ATHOLL. 459 

good breeding, good humor, good sense, 

were the daily ornaments of a useful life, 

protracted by Providence to an uncommon length, 

for the benefit of all who fell within the sphere of her benevolence. 

Full of years and of good works, 

she died on the 6th day of December, 1746, 

near the end of her 81st year, 

and was buried on her birthday, the 25th of that month. 



LADY CATHARINE HAMILTON, 

DUCHESS OF ATHOLL 

Among the " devout and honorable women not a few" in our 
country, who, in former times, adorned a high station by their 
exalted piety and their zeal for God, the subject of the present 
notice is entitled to a prominent place. It is chiefly from her 
diary* that we derive the information we possess concerning her, 
and it is mostly a record of her Christian exercise and experi- 
ence ; so that few incidents in her history are now known. Her 
life, indeed, appears to have been of a regular and little varying 
tenor, hardly connected with any of those signal events and con- 
junctures which give to biography much of its attraction ; and a 
sketch of it does not, therefore, admit of a varied and striking 
narrative. But it may, notwithstanding, be interesting and in- 
structive to the serious reader, to peruse a few illustrations of 
her eminently devout and Christian character. To those ladies 
who have already engaged our attention, she was similar in spirit 
and in sentiments ; and she could look back to many of her an- 
cestors, on whom God had conferred the highest of all nobility, 
the titles of which " are not written in old rotten or moulded 
parchments, but ar^ more ancient than the heavens." She com- 
menced her diary about the year 1688, in the twenty-fifth year 
of her age, and continued it down to the period of her death. 
From the commencement, it displays remarkably sound views of 
evangelical truth, and much maturity of religious experience ; 
and throughout, it breathes a spirit singularly amiable, and fer- 
vently pious. As many parts of it are very much alike, instead 
of giving it entire, it will be sufficient to select a few passages 
as a representation of the general character of the whole. 

* Her diary is printed in the Christian Magazine, for 1813, to which it was com- 
municated by the late Rev. Mr. Moncrieff, minister of the secession Church in Ham- 
ilton. 



460 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

Catharine Hamilton was the second daughter of William, 
third duke of Hamilton, and Anne, duchess of Hamilton, of whom 
a notice has already been given. She was born at Hamilton 
palace in 1662, and in 1683 was married to John Lord Murray, 
eldest son of the first marquis of Atholl, afterward first duke of 
Atholl, in the twenty-first year of her age. She enjoyed the 
great blessing of an eminently pious mother, who anxiously en- 
deavored to imbue her young mind with divine truth and the fear 
of God. Under this religious training she greatly profited ; and 
she appears to have been from her earliest years of a serious and 
contemplative turn of mind. At an early period she had acquired 
an extensive acquaintance with the Scriptures, and an accurate 
knowledge of the distinguishing truths of the gospel. Nor did 
this knowledge merely float in the head ; it deeply impressed 
her heart, resulting in early proofs of her genuine piety. Near 
the beginning of her diary there is the following entry : — 

" O my soul! remember Friday the 18th of November, 1681, 
and Thursday the 24th, wherein the Lord thy God was pleased 
to give thee sweetest consolation in himself, and some assurance 
of his reconciled countenance at Hamilton." 

This was in the nineteenth year of her age, .two years previ- 
ous to her marriage. But her husband, in a note on this pas- 
sage, states that he had heard her say that she had given herself 
up to God some years before the time referred to. Thus, ere 
she had reached womanhood, she had surrendered herself to God, 
and the whole of her subsequent life evinced the entireness and 
the sincerity with which the surrender had been made. Christ 
she then chose as her Savior, God as her portion, the Divine 
glory as her chief end, the Divine law as her infallible guide ; 
and from her God and Savior she sought and found grace and 
strength to proceed in the Christian course. It is indeed inter- 
esting to see a young lady in exalted station thus escaping the 
fascinations of worldly pleasure and gayety, with which the 
young are so apt to be entangled, and making the concerns of 
the soul and of eternity, which the young are so prone to defer 
to a future season, the chief object of her attention : — 

" Lady, that in the prime of earliest youth 
Wisely hast shunned the broad way and the green, 
And with those few art eminently seen, 
That labor up the hill of heavenly truth. 
The better part with Mary and with Ruth, 
Chosen thou hast."* 

In her diary the allusions to the period of the persecution are 
* Milton. 



DUCHESS OF ATHOLL. 461 

few and only casual, but they plainly indicate her detestation of 
the ferocious intolerance of that period, and her sympathy with 
those good men who, for standing up in defence of their religious 
rights and liberties, were banished to foreign climes, or pined in 
dungeons, or whose blood was shed on scaffolds. Speaking of 
the forfeiture of the estate of the earl of Argyll, which took place 
in the close of the year 1681, and of the marquis of Atholl, who 
raised and headed some of the troops which were afterward led 
against the earl, having accepted and retained some of his for- 
feited lands, she says, " I was always convinced that it was a 
most unjust forfeiture that of the late earl of Argyll, and so was 
grieved that my husband's father should have any part of it given 
to him." At the same time she records, with much satisfaction, 
that her husband had no hand in the oppression of the Argyll 
family, and would never consent to share in the spoils. " My 
husband," says she, "had no part in it [the forfeited estate], and 
did at the time disapprove of his father's meddling with it, and 
would never, though he pressed him to it, take anything of it." 

After the persecution had closed, she took a deep interest in 
the prosperity of the presbyterian church ; and knowing that the 
gospel is " the power of God unto salvation," she was particu- 
larly concerned that the parishes of Scotland should be supplied 
with devoted evangelical ministers. Lay patronage having 
been abolished at the revolution, her husband had not the power 
of presenting ministers to vacant parishes ; but as the heritors of 
each parish, being protestants, and the elders, were to propose a 
suitable person to the congregation, to be either approved or dis- 
approved by them,* heritors and elders, it is obvious, had great 
influence in the settlement of ministers ; and she was extremely 
desirous that her husband should use this influence in procuring 
the settlement of pious and able gospel ministers. To prevail 
on him to do this, her prayers and counsel were not wanting ; 
and, by the blessing of God, they had the desired effect. Wri- 
ting at Falkland, May 9, 1691, in reference to the settlement of 
a minister in that place, she says : " O Lord, help me always to 
remember thy goodness to me. Thou hast many times prevented 
me with thy mercies, and disappointed my fears ; and now again, 
lately, I have had another proof of it. Thou only knowest what 
a burden it was to me, the fear I was in that my husband should 
have obstructed a good minister being settled in this place ; and 
now, glory to God that has given me to see him the main, nay, 

* The reasons of the congregation, if they disapproved of the person proposed, 
were to be laid before the presbytery, which was to judge of them. 
39* 



462 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

I may say the only instrument of bringing a godly minister, the 
Rev. Mr. John Forrest, to this place. O Lord, grant he may in 
the first place reap the benefit of his ministry to himself, and 
bless it in a special manner to him, that he, finding the good of 
it, may yet be more instrumental in bringing in good ministers to 
the places he has interest in." 

Falkland at that time was a very irreligious and profane place. 
During the persecution, though there were in it a few intelligent 
and pious persons, who refused to conform to prelacy, and to 
whom Mr. John Welwood and other proscribed ministers fre- 
quently preached privately in some of their houses, yet the great 
body of the population had no scruples in conforming to prelacy ; 
so that when the curate of the parish dispensed the sacrament 
of the Lord's Supper, a great multitude assembled, and he could 
boast, what many of his brethren could not do, of the large num- 
ber on his communicants' roll.* In this place, where " Satan 
had his seat in much peace,"t where ignorance and profanity so 
greatly abounded, it could not be expected that the people would 
set much value upon the gospel, or that they would feel anything 
like a general desire for the settlement of an evangelical and de- 
voted minister among them. It was therefore a very merciful 
providence that others, who better understood and appreciated 
the worth of an efficient gospel ministry, successfully exerted 
themselves in procuring for them this great blessing. 

At this time, the subject of our notice was residing at Falkland 
palace, which was a favorite retreat of James VI., probably on 
account of his attachment to hunting, for which the adjacent for- 
est afforded excellent opportunities, but which, after his acces- 
sion to the crown of England, ceased to be a royal residence, 
though it was visited by Charles I. aad Charles II. In 1658, it 
fell into the hands of the Atholl family. From the entries in her 
diary, Lady Murray appears residing there from January, 1689, 
till May, 1691. 

During this period her husband was threatened with a con- 
sumption, and his health continued for more than a year in a very 
precarious state. This caused her deep anxiety ; and her re- 
flections in regard to his condition, evince the struggle she felt 
between natural affection and submission to the will of God. 
Writing at Cupar, sabbath, May 17, 1691, after adverting to his 
illness, she adds, " Thou knowest that I have this day promised 
if thou wilt be pleased to spare and recover him, to endeavor, 
through thy strength, to live more watchfully and holily ; but, 

* Diary of Jean Collace, Wodrow MSS., vol. xxxi., 8vo, No. 7. t Ibid. 



DUCHESS OF ATHOLL. 463 

all ! Lord, how unable am I for anything that is good, if thou as- 
sist me not. True is thy word which thou hast said, holy Jesus ! 
that without thee we can do nothing, John xv. 5. But I shall 
be able to do all things, even the hardest, if thou assist. There- 
fore, this day, with all my soul I beg of thee, that thou wilt give me 
entire submission to thy holy will and pleasure, whatever it shall 
be : that even if thou shouldst see fit to take away the desire of mine 
eyes, I may lay my hand on my mouth and be silent, since it is 
thy doing, who canst do nothing wrong. And be with me in the 
midst of my troubles, and support me under them, as thou hast been 
graciously pleased to do this time and heretofore, or which I de- 
sire, from the bottom of my soul, to bless and magnify thy name, 
who canst abundantly make up the loss of all earthly comforts. 
Be thou, then, in place of all unto me, blessed Jesus ! and let 
never any idol be in my heart when thou oughtest to be in the 
chief room. But thou hast not only allowed of a lawful love to 
my husband, but commanded me to have it. Therefore, it is 
lawful, and my duty, to pray for him. Spare him, O Lord ! for 
Christ's sake, and bless him with long life in this world, that he 
may glorify thee in his generation, and be an instrument of doing 
good to the people among whom thou hast set him, and be a blessing 
to his family. O God, hear me ! and grant unto me, for Christ's 
sake, O grant, that the shaking of this rod over my head may be 
a mean to bring me back to my duty, which it will be, if thou 
grant thy blessing with it, which I beg for thy Son's sake, for 
whose sake alone I desire to be heard." 

She afterward records her gratitude to God for her husband's 
recovery to health. 

Having resolved, in the summer of 1697, to go to Hamilton to 
visit her mother, and to enjoy the sacrament of the Lord's sup- 
per, which was to be celebrated there on the 19th of July, she 
spent the sabbath preceding at Edinburgh, where her husband, 
now earl of Tullibardine,* then was. She was careful, at all 
times, to sanctify the Lord's day, but this being the sabbath pre- 
ceding that on which she purposed to commemorate the Lord's 
death in the sacrament of the supper, she endeavored in a par- 
ticular manner, by meditation and prayer, to have her mind 
brought into a suitable frame for the solemn service which she had 
in prospect. "Edinburgh, Sunday, July 12, 1697. O my soul, 
bless God the Lord that ever he put it into thy heart to seek him, 
for he hath promised that those that seek him shall find him. 

* He was created earl of Tullibardine, Viscount Glen Almond, and Lord Murray* 
for life, July 27, 1696. 



464 THE LADIES OF THE CCWENANT. 

This day I was reading the 16th chapter of John, verses 23, 24, 
' Verily, verily, I say unto you, whatsoever ye shall ask the Fa- 
ther in my name, he will give it you,' &c. O gracious promises ! 
Then I began to think what it was I would ask of God. The 
thought that immediately occurred to me was, Jesus Christ to 
dwell in my heart by faith and love. Methought, that if God 
would put it in my offer to have all the universe, Avith all the 
glory, honor, riches, and splendor of it, I would rather have 
Christ, to be my King, Priest, and Prophet, than have it all. O 
that he would always rule in me, and conquer all his and my en- 
emies — my corruptions, temptations, and sins, I mean — and al- 
ways assist and strengthen me to serve him faithfully and up- 
rightly. Now, blessed Jesus, thou who hast said, ' Whatsoever 
we ask in thy name, the Father will give it,' this is my petition 
and my request : fulfil thy word to me. Thou art faithful that 
hast promised : therefore I desire to believe and trust that thou 
wilt perform. O never forsake me, nor leave me to myself. 
Lord, I do believe and hope that thou wilt, through the riches of 
free grace, and thy meritorious satisfaction, redeem and save me 
from eternal death and damnation ; but I beg not only so, but to 
be redeemed from the power of sin, corruption, and vain imagi- 
nations. Oh ! they are strong and stirring. O wilt thou not sub- 
due them ! Lord I desire to obey thee, and to be of good cheer, 
and believe that, as thou hast overcome the world, so thou wilt 
overcome my sins, in thy own due and appointed time. And 
now, Lord, thou knowest I am designing, if thou shalt permit, to 
partake of thy holy supper. O, prepare me for it, and let me not 
be an unworthy receiver, Do thou there meet with my soul, and 
renew thy covenant and faithfulness unto me, and enlarge my 
heart and soul, and give me supplies of grace and strength to 
serve thee. Oh ! I have often played the harlot, and gone astray 
with many lovers, Jer. iii. 1. Yet thou sayest, Return again 
unto me, and often, as in this chapter invitest me to return. O 
Lord, I come unto thee, for thou art the Lord, my covenanted 
God. Thou knowest that, this day, I know not of any fraud or 
guile in this declaration. If there be, Lord, search me and try 
me, and discover it unto me, and take it away, and cleanse me 
from all mine iniquities. let this be my mercy this day." 

By the observance of the Lord's supper at this time, she was 
much refreshed and comforted. On the Wednesday after, she 
solemnly calls upon her soul not to forget to render to God thanks- 
giving and praise, for having dealt so bountifully and mercifully 
with her. " Thou hast been pleased," she says, " to give me at 



DUCHESS OF ATHOLL. 465 

this time, what thou wast graciously pleased to do, the last two 
times I communicated, namely, a promise in Scripture, which 
thou madest me formerly believe in, and rest quietly upon, which 
was the 16th verse of the fifteenth chapter of John : ' I have 
chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth 
fruit, and that your fruit should remain ; that whatsoever ye shall 
ask of the Father, in my name, he may give it you.'. ... A little 
before going to thy table, thou knowest what darkness and con- 
fusedness I had, though still, blessed be thy holy name ! there 
remained the hope and confidence of thy being reconciled to me 
through the blood of the Lamb, represented to me at thy table, as 
shed for my sins ; but thou wast most graciously pleased before I 
went to thy table, to make me go there with solid peace and sat- 
isfaction, firmly believing that thou calledst me, and that I had a 
right to go there. Also when I was at thy table, it was said by 
thy minister — I doubt not by thy guiding and directing Spirit — 
What is your request, and what is your petition 1 Then it oc- 
curred again unto me what I had done before, when reading the 
23d and 24th verses of the sixteenth of John, to entreat Jesus 
Christ to dwell in my heart by faith, and never to leave me, nor 
forsake me ; and there [at the Lord's table] I did, thou knowest, 
O Lord, with the sincerity of my soul, accept of the Lord as my 
covenanted God, and did most earnestly entreat the assistance 
of thy Holy Spirit and strength to be with me for ever, that 1 may 
never go out of thy way, but be helped to live uprightly and 
holily all the days of my appointed time." 

Hamilton was a place endeared to her by many sacred as well 
as tender recollections. Not only was it her birthplace, the 
dwelling-place of her infancy, and her parental residence ; but 
God there first visited her soul in mercy — an event the most im- 
portant in her history, when viewed in the light of eternity. In 
after-life she looked back to this period with feelings of the deep- 
est gratitude to God ; and Hamilton was to her ever after a con- 
secrated spot. " This was the place," says she, after recording 
her experience of the goodness of God to her on that sacramental 
occasion, " where thou first lookedst upon me in mercy, and 
saidst unto me when I was in my blood, Live, about sixteen or 
seventeen years ago. But, oh !" she adds, " I have been often a 
trangressor and revolter since ; but thou wast faithful, and didst 
not break thy covenant with me, nor alter the thing that had gone 
out of thy mouth, Psalm lxxxix. 34, but rather performedst thy 
promise, verses 31, 32, ' That if I should break thy statutes, and 
keep not thy covenant, thou wouidest visit my transgressions 



466 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

with the rod, and mine iniquity with stripes, but thy loving-kind- 
ness thou wouldest never take away from me, nor suffer thy 
faithfulness to fail.' Blessed be thy holy name, thou art the 
same yesterday, to-day, and for evermore, on which I rest. 
Amen, amen." 

In the beginning of September, 1697, she and her husband left 
Edinburgh for London. On sabbath, September 5, they rested 
at Alnwick, the seat of the duke of Northumberland ; and, on 
Saturday, the 18th of that month, they arrived at Kensington, 
where they remained the greater part of a year. During the 
time of her residence at Kensington, though, from her living at 
court, her obstacles to retirement and meditation were increased, 
there is ample evidence from her diary that much of her time 
was spent in reading the Scriptures, in spiritual meditation, in 
self-examination, and in prayer. 

At the commencement of a new year it was her practice, in a 
particular manner to review her past life ; to take an account of 
the manner in which she had spent the year that was gone, never 
to be recalled ; to mark the rapidity with which she was advan- 
cing in the journey of life, and to embrace God anew, as her God 
for time and for eternity. On the first day of the year 1698, 
when in the thirty-sixth year of her age, she thus writes : " I 
have this day renewed again my covenant with my God, though 
in great weakness, yet, I hope in sincerity. I have given up my- 
self, soul and body, to be at his disposal, as he sees meet. O that 
he would be pleased to give me new strength to serve him in 
newness of life this new year, and that as days are added to my 
natural life, so grace may be added to my spiritual. O that with 
the old year, which will never return again, I may have left off 
my old, sinful, crooked, and worldly ways, and never return to 
them again. Lord, thou who searchest the heart, and triest the 
reins, knowest that this is more the desire of my soul than all 
gold or silver, or honors or pleasures upon this earth. Therefore, 
O deny me not the earnest request of my soul this day, and ful- 
fil that scripture thou broughtest to my mind this morning in 
prayer, ' I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee,' Heb. xiii. 5." 

On the first day of a subsequent year, 1699, which was sab- 
bath, she thus writes at Huntingtower : " This day I have been 
reflecting how I have spent the last year, and alas ! I find great 
cause to mourn, for I have been very earthly-minded and carnal, 
and, with Martha, cumbered about many things, and have much 
neglected the one thing needful. Lord, pardon me, for Jesus 
Christ's sake ; I desire to repent and be humble. O that thou 



DUCHESS OF ATHOLL. 467 

may est help me to spend this year better, if thou sparest me. 
But I find all my resolutions ineffectual unless thou assist me ; but 
if thou wilt put to thy helping- hand, and give me the lively in- 
fluences of thy Holy Spirit, duties will not only be easy but pleas- 
ant to me. I have been endeavoring, though, alas! in much 
deadness and weakness, to renew my covenant with thee ; and 
this day I desire to confirm all that I have ever done before, to 
resign myself and all that is mine to thee. Holy Lord, accept 
of me, and give me sincerity and truth, and say thou that thou 
acceptest of me." 

Huntingtower (formerly called Ruthven castle), at which these 
reflections were written, was another place where she and her 
husband sometimes resided. This castle, which is in the parish 
of Tibbermuir, is a very ancient building, though it does not ap- 
pear ever to have been a place of great strength. It was for- 
merly the seat of the Gowrie family, and the place where James 
VI. was some time confined by the earl of Gowrie and others, in 
the enterprise usually called the Raid of Rutliven ; but the cas- 
tle, with the adjoining barony, became the property of the Atholl 
family, by a marriage with the Tullibardine family, who had re- 
ceived it from James VI., after the earl of Gowrie had lost it in 
consequence of his conspiracy. It is now the seat of a calico- 
printing establishment. 

To the spiritual welfare of her children, Lady Tullibardine's 
pious emotions, wishes, and prayers were, in an especial manner, 
directed. When, in May, 1698, the earl went to Oxford with 
their eldest son, John, purposing to leave him there at school, 
should it be found a suitable place for carrying on his education, 
she records her earnest desire not only that her son might be ac- 
complished in every kind of secular learning, but that, as God 
had distinguished him by a high birth in this world, he would 
also confer upon him the higher distinction of being holy in char- 
acter, and a promoter of true godliness. " I could not remem- 
ber," she adds, " that I had dedicated him in the womb so much 
to God as I had done the rest ; but this day [sabbath, May 22], 
I have resigned him, and all the rest of my children, wholly to 
be the Lord's. O accept of the gift, so far as they are mine to 
give ; they are thine by creation, O let them be thine by adop- 
tion, regeneration, sanctification, and redemption. Fulfil to me, 
O Lord, the 127th and 128th psalms, that my children may be thy 
heritage, and the fruit of my womb thy reward ; that thus I may 
be blessed out of Zion, that thus I may be blessed of those that 
desire to fear thy name, and that I may see the good of thy Je- 



468 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

rusalem, and peace upon thy Israel. And O forget not my ab- 
sent husband, the father of these children, whom I have given up 
unto thee, and make him say amen to the bargain ; and be thou 
his God, and my God, and the God of our seed, from henceforth, 
from this day, and for ever, amen. And to thee, holy Father, 
blessed Redeemer, and sanctifying Spirit, be the glory and praise 
of all." 

In June this year she returned to Scotland with the earl, who 
went north to attend the Scottish parliament ;* and during their 
stay at Edinburgh, their lodgings were in the abbey. They next 
went to Huntingtovver ; and from the dates in her diary, she ap- 
pears residing there from November 1698, to May 1701. 

From her diary we are at no loss to discover her warm attach- 
ment to the presbyterian church of Scotland. But while espous- 
ing from conviction the presbyterian cause, she held her princi- 
ples in a spirit of charity and forbearance. Hers was not a re- 
ligion which would deny the validity of a Divine ordinance, be- 
cause not administered in the way she judged most agreeable lo the 
Word of God, or which would deny the Christianity of all who did 
not belong to the church of which she was a member. So high 
were the Scottish episcopalians of that day on the doctrine of 
episcopal succession, as to deny that presbyterian ministers were 
lawful ministers; maintaining that without episcopal government 
there could be no regular ordination of ministers, and consequent- 
ly holding that all the services of the presbyterian ministers as 
such were so many irregular nullities. Even some of the more 
wild among them went so far as to declare, that those who were 
not of the communion of the church of England were in a state 
of damnation, and left to the uncovenanted mercy of God.f But 
these opinions the duchess justly regarded as extreme and unten- 
able, and the remarks she makes on them, while indicating her 
entire want of sympathy with such extravagant sectarianism, 
and her regret that it should be obtruded on the church, to create 
division and offence, are yet marked by great mildness of tem- 
per. " Dunk eld, April 4, 1706 : I was this day reflecting upon 
the sad divisions of this church ; and now it is become a doctrine 
preached up by the episcopalians, that the presbyterians are not 
lawful ministers, and that what they do is not valid, so that those 
they baptize are not baptized ; and that the people owe them no 
obedience in their ministerial authority. I was made to think it 
was a matter of great lamentation, and presaged very sad things 

* Carstairs's State Papers, p. 381. 

t Wodrow's Correspondence, vol. i. pp. 202, 400. 



DUCHESS OF ATHOLL. 469 

to this nation, and the more that it was so little laid to heart, and 
that there is so great a neglect, to say no worse, of the gospel 
which is preached so powerfully among us." 

The duchess was seized with her last illness at Hamilton pal- 
ace, whither she had gone on a visit to her mother, about the 
close of the year 1706, and she died there in January, 1707, in 
the forty-fifth year of her age. Her husband, to his great grief, 
was absent during the closing scene, having been attending the 
last parliament of Scotland, at Edinburgh, and not having been 
apprized of her dangerous condition in sufficient time to be able 
to reach Hamilton, to see her in life, the symptoms not having 
assumed a decidedly alarming aspect till shortly before her death. 
But by her mother, the duchess of Hamilton, and other sympa- 
thizing friends, she was waited upon with all manner of affec- 
tionate tenderness and care. To the last she retained the full 
possession of her faculties, and as her life had been eminently 
holy, so her latter end was peace. She had long been under 
the training of her heavenly Father, and now she maintained a 
tranquil resignation to his sovereign will. Her confidence as a 
guilty sinner — for such she felt herself to be — in the great pro- 
pitiation, and in God's everlasting covenant, remained unshaken 
throughout the mortal conflict, producing the sure anticipation 
of future blessedness, and enabling her to triumph over all the 
terrors of the last enemy. 

Not much more than two hours before her death, the medical 
gentleman who attended her, finding the vital powers fast sinking, 
informed her friends present of her dangerous situation. This 
was on the 9th of January, a little before ten o'clock at night. 
Mr. Findlater, one of the ministers of the parish of Hamilton, 
being immediately sent for, to administer to her religious comfort, 
and to pray with her, hastened to the palace ; and, at the request 
of the duke of Atholl, he wrote a short account of the circum- 
stances attending her death. When he came into the room, an 
attendant told her that Mr. Findlater was present, to whom, being 
in a state of great prostration, she answered, " Tell him I can 
not speak ; desire him to pray." After prayer he spoke to her a 
few words encouraging her against the terror of death, from the 
nature of God's covenant with her, and her interest in it. She 
then regretted her want of strength to speak, that she might show 
what interest she had in the covenant, and what God had done 
for her soul. She owned that she had frequently renewed her 
covenant with God, and given her consent to it, and that now 
this was her greatest comfort. Her want of strength to declare 
40 



470 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

to those about her, so fully as she desired, her experience of the 
goodness of God, and her calm and brightening hope of endless 
felicity, was indeed her greatest grief. This she regretted not 
only to Mr. Findlater, but also to her nurse who attended her, to 
whom she called frequently a little before her death, " O pray, 
pray that I may have a little ease, that I may declare God's 
goodness to me." Having withdrawn for a short time to the 
next room, Mr. Findlater returned to her chamber, and, thinking 
she had become more oppressed, asked her how it was with her. 
She answered, " Very weak — and dying." But she knew in 
whom she had believed, and seemed to comfort herself with 
these words, which the minister quoted, and which she repeated 
after him, " My flesh and my heart faileth : but God is the 
strength of my heart, and my portion for ever." She then desired 
him to pray. He asked her what he should pray for to her ; what 
was that one thing she would seek from the Lord, above all things. 
" Pray," said she, " but for as much strength as that I may de- 
clare the goodness of God to me;" straining herself apparently, 
and speaking with a more elevated voice than formerly. He 
asked her whether she desired to live, or to die and be with 
Christ, which was best of all. She said, " That is best of all 
indeed.'' In time of prayer he heard her repeat some words of 
scripture after him; particularly when mention was made of the 
covenant being ordered in all things, and sure, she said, " That 
is all my salvation and all my desire ;" which, says Mr. Find- 
later, " were the last words she spoke in my hearing. Though 
her body was greatly pained," he adds, " yet her soul seemed 
full of the joy of the Lord, which is unspeakable and full of glory." 
He again left her chamber a second time. During his absence, 
her mother, seeing her weak, asked her if she had anything to 
say to her. She answered — and the answer shows how unabated 
affection for dear surviving earthly friends may mingle with the 
calm resignation that bids farewell to life, and with the joy aris- 
ing from the certain prospect of everlasting blessedness — " Dear 
mother, be kind to my Lord," which were the last words she 
spoke, as the duke feelingly records. When Mr. Findlater came 
into her room the third time, she could speak none, and in a 
moment or two after he had again prayed with her, she fell asleep 
in Christ, about a quarter of an hour after twelve o'clock at night. 
The duke of Atholl was much affected by the death of his 
beloved wife, of whose great worth he was deeply sensible, and 
it enhanced his sorrow that he enjoyed not the melancholy satis- 
faction of seeing her on her deathbed. At the close of her diary 



DUCHESS OF ATHOLL. 471 

he thus records the mournful dispensation : " It hath pleased the 
great and only wise God, who doeth what he sees fit in heaven 
and in earth, to take from me, to himself, my dear wife, Catha- 
rine, duchess of Atholl, and in her my chiefest earthly comfort. 
She died at Hamilton between the ninth and tenth of January, 
1707, between twelve and one o'clock, Friday morning. I was 
at that time in Edinburgh, attending the last parliament of Scot- 
land, and was not timeously advertised of her dangerous condi- 
tion, so that I wanted the satisfaction of being with her in her 
last hours, which was an extraordinary great addition to my 
irreparable loss. Mr. Findlater, minister of Hamilton, was sent 
for but two hours before her death, till which time the doctor 
that was with her did not declare she was in any danger. I 
desired Mr. Findlater to put in writing what she had said con- 
cerning the state of her soul ; which shows that she died in the 
same holy disposition and frame in which she had lived." 

As the duke highly esteemed and loved the duchess while she 
lived, so he continued to cherish her memory after she was gone. 
From several parts of her diary, there is reason to believe that 
he was not neglectful of the most important interests, and that 
his religious impressions were very much owing to her prayers, 
counsel, and example. He greatly valued the memorials of her 
Christian experience and exercise contained in her diary, which 
she expressly left as a dying legacy to him, in the hope that he 
might profit by it ; and the solemn and affectionate thought of her 
virtues and graces, now when she had entered eternity, enforced 
with new power the motives to religion. He now seemed, as it 
were, to hear her in that document, speaking to him from the 
eternal world, bidding him make the salvation of the soul the 
one thing needful, and follow in the path which had conducted 
her to immortal happiness. Even ten years subsequently to her 
death, he employed himself in transcribing a copy from the origi- 
nal, written with her own hand, prefixing to the copy the follow- 
ing notice : " This book, with some other papers written by my 
dear wife, were left by her to me just before her death. She 
recommended them to me by a paper she caused me to write at 
that time, calling them her treasure, which she desired I might 
make good use of. — Dunkeld, March, 1717. " Atholl." 

In politics the duke was shifting, but he continued to his death 
warmly attached to the government and worship of the church 
of Scotland. " He was a most zealous presbyterian," says 
Douglas, " and, after he joined the cavaliers, still courted and 
preserved his interest with the presbyterian ministers, professing 



472 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

always to be firm to their kirk-government, hearing them always 
in their churches, and patronizing them much more than those 
of the episcopal persuasion, which induced many of the tones to 
doubt his sincerity."* His continuing to adhere steadily to the 
presbyterian church, after joining the cavaliers, was so incon- 
sistent, that it could hardly fail of rendering him an object of 
distrust to the party which he joined. But the inconsistency is 
easily explained, when we take into account that he was proba- 
bly not a stranger to true religion. Circumstances prevailed in 
making him desert the whigs, among whom he very likely saw 
not a little of the selfishness, corruption, and want of principle, 
which have often disgraced politicians of all classes ; but the 
religious element kept him close to the church of Scotland, to 
which almost all the piety of Scotland was at that time confined. 
In the former case, he may be said to have acted according to 
early educational influence ; in the latter, according to the happier 
influence which his duchess had exerted upon him while she 
lived, and which her memory continued to exercise upon him 
after her death. 

* Douglas's Peerage, vol. i., p. 150. 



APPENDIX. 



No. I.— (p. 49.) 

Letter of Mr, Robert M' Ward to Lady Ardross. 

[This letter, which is in vol. lx., folio, No. 31, of the Wodrow MSS., 

is in M'Ward's handwriting, and he describes it "A double of a line 

to the Lady Ardross when I was in prison, and she was to leave the 

town."] 

" Worthy Madam : All that I can do (neither can I do that to pur- 
pose), is only to acknowledge a debt to your ladyship, which I am not 
able to pay ; but I know you were pleased upon such an account to 
concern and interest yourself in that business, as, when I can not re- 
quite it, He who takes notice of less, and will not suffer a cup of cold 
water to want its reward, will remember this your labor of love, and 
make it a fruit which shall abound to your account. I hope, madam, 
however your affairs have, by calling you hence, deprived your lady- 
ship of the occasion and me of the advantage of your interceding with 
men in my behalf, yet ye will not forget to deal with God in my be- 
half, that now, when it comes to the swellings of Jordan, I may not 
sink nor succumb, and desert a cause upon which [I] am obliged not 
only to venture my life, but some way soul also, which is by sealing 
that poor testimony with my blood, if he call me to it, though he should 
suffer me to die in the dark, and never say to my soul he could save 
me." 



No. II.— (p. 96.) 

The Marchioness of Argyll's Interview with Middleton, after the Condem- 
nation of her Husband. 

In another part of his Analecta (vol. i., p. 73), "Wodrow records a 
few additional facts in reference to this interview. " December 6, 1705. 
As to what goes before November 11, Mr. Robert Muir gives the very 
same account that he had from Mr. James Drummond, the Lady Ar- 
gyll's chaplain, with this variation, that the king told Middleton while 
yet a gentleman at Breda, that he behooved, when he went over to 
England (it was a very little before his restoration), he behooved to be 
his commissioner in Scotland, [to] get these three things done. And 
he told him this would anger the nobility, and refused, till for three 
days the king looked down on him ; and when he asked him the reason, 
40* 



474 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

he said lie would still do so till he went in with his former proposal, 
which he did. And, therefore, says he, to the Lady Argyll, « I can do 
you no service.' And he told her that purposely he had shifted speak- 
ing to her ; and that he kept spies on her servants when they came to 
the abbey, so that, when they called for him, he was still not to be 
found ; and at this time she had surprised him. This, Mr. Drummond 
heard her tell frequently." 



No. HI.— (p. 100.) 

Marchioness of Argyll, and her Son the Earl of Argyll. 

Her son, the earl of Argyll, afterward became a great courtier, took 
the declaration abjuring the covenants, and in other respects complied 
with the evil courses of the time. This was deeply regretted by his 
mother, and the best friends of the Argyll family, who were ready to 
exclaim, " O tempora ! O mores /" But she never lost hopes of his 
returning to his father's principles, as appears from a letter of Mr. 
James Stirling, minister of Barony, Glasgow, to a brother minister 
whose name is unknown, dated Glasgow, May 5, 1722, in which he 
says: "I was yesterday visiting Mr. John Stewart's eldest son, who I 
truly fear may be dying. His mother, Mrs. Stewart, told me a pas- 
sage which she had from her honest father, John Ritchie, which I sup- 
pose ye may have known, and she said he told it to her several times, 
that he was very intimate with that choice elect lady, my lady mar- 
chioness of Argyll. He was one day with her in her chamber, and he 
said very freely to her, 'Madam, I apprehend that your son the earl 
of Argyll's going on in such a way, with the court of this time, will be 
grieving to your ladyship.' The sun was shining then very brightly in 
tbat chamber where he and my lady was, and she answered John 
Ritchie thus : ' John, I am as clear[ly] and fully persuaded as ye now 
clearly see the sun shining in this chamber, that my son will have a 
saving change wrought upon him before he die, and that he will return 
to his father's way, and that he will be brought to suffer for it.' 31 rs. 
Stewart said to me that her father told her this, that I now write to 
you, many times — as good as twentv times — and that her father was 
very great with ' that noble prince' (as worthy Mr. John Carstairs used 
to call him), the marquis of Argyll. I heard once something like this, 
but never got such a document for it as I got yesterday."* 



No. IV.— (p. 128.) 

Letter of Mrs. John Carstairs to her Husband. 

The letter which it was intended to insert here having appeared in 
the "Christian Instructor" for 1840 (p. 55), is omitted to make room 
for some original papers. 

* Letters to Wodrow, vol. x , 4to, No. 170, MSS. in Advocates' Library. 



APPENDIX. 475 



No. V.— (p. 147.) 

Suspected Corruption of Clarendon's History. 

Wodrow, writing in 1731, says : " Mr. J. Hamilton tells me that 
he had what follows from the duchess of Hamilton's own mouth ; the 
old duchess I mean, the heir to the family ; and so, I think, it may be 
depended on. He says Bishop Guthrie's Memoirs were published a 
little before Clarendon's History, first printed 1710, at Oxford ; that it 
was then generally believed that the edition of Bishop Guthrie was 
much altered from the bishop's papers, by the influence of the gentle- 
men of Oxford, who had the publishing of Clarendon in their hands ; 
that when he was talking of this with the duchess, and the approach- 
ing edition of Clarendon, her grace told him that when she was at court, 
after the restoration, when the earl of Clarendon was writing his His- 
tory, he came and visited her, and told her that he knew her father 
very well, and took him to be one of the honestest men of his acquaint- 
ance. He added, her father had been abused and very ill used by the 
party writers, before and since his death ; and that now he was writing 
a history of those times, he was willing to do the duke all the justice 
in his power, and desired her to furnish him with any papers which 
might give light to his actings. Accordingly, when she came down 
to Scotland, her grace called for Dr. Burnet, and implored him to 
rummage all the papers in Hamilton that related to her father, and 
to lay out what he reckoned might be of use to the earl ; and she 
sent up by an express a large bundle of papers, relative to her father, 
to England. That, next time she went to court, a year or two 
after, the earl of Clarendon came and waited upon her at London, 
thanked her for the papers she had communicat to him, and returned 
them all safe. He told her he was now perfectly satisfied as to her 
father's character, and that he was as honest a man as breathed, and 
would give it fully and fairly to the world ; only, there remained one 
particular about which he was not yet so clear as he could wish. The 
duke's enemies alleged that he brought over ten thousand stand of 
arms from Holland, and seemed to vouch it ; they pretended further, 
that he himself had a design on the crown, to accomplish which he got 
these arms. This, the duchess said, touched her very nearly, and she 
immediately resolved to send a servant express to Hamilton, and or- 
dered a new search to be made at Hamilton, particularly for anything 
that related to ten thousand stand of arms ; and, very happily, the ser- 
vant brought her the original commission, under the king's own hand, 
to bring so many stand of arms for his service ! This the duchess im- 
mediately sent to the earl. When he saw and read it, he came back 
with it to her grace, and said : ' Now, madam, I am satisfied in every 
point ; and I believe and am assured your father was one of the best, 
sincerest, and honestest persons, of that time ; and I will give him, as 
is my duty, a just and fair character to the world.' This passed before 
Clarendon was published. Expectations were great enough when the 



476 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

earl's History was a-printing. As soon as it came down, the duchess 
got it and read it. When Mr. Hamilton saw her after she had got the 
printed Clarendon, he asked her how she liked it. She answered, with 
some concern : ' I have read it, and I and my family are greatly abused 
in it; and, I apprehend, this is the fruit of the earl's MS. its lying 
twenty years in the hands of the gentlemen at Oxford' — and she verily 
believed that the earl's original History was grossly vitiated."* 



No. VI.— (p. 282.) 

Indictment of Isabel Alison and Marion Harvey. 

The justiciary court having met at Edinburgh, on the 17th of Janu- 
ary, 1683, the judges on the bench being Lords Richard Maitland of 
Duddop, justice-clerk, James Foulis of Colintoun, Robert Nairn of 
Strathurd, David Balfour of Forret, David Falconer of Newtoun, and 
Roger Hog of Harcars ; the two martyrs were brought to the bar, and 
their indictment was read, an extract of which, from the records of the 
justiciary court, we here subjoin : — 

^Inlran. 

-Isabel Al.son, ) Pris 

"Marion Harvey, $ ' 

Indicted and accused. That where notwithstanding by the common 
law, the law of nations, laws and acts of parliament of this kingdom 
and constant practice thereof, the rising, joining, and assembling together 
in arms of any number of his majesty's subjects, the entering into leagues 
or bonds with foreigners, or among themselves, without and contrary to 
his majesty's command, warrant, and authority, and the abetting, as- 
sisting, receipting, intercommuning, and keeping correspondence, with 
such rebels, supplying or furnishing them with meat, drink, &c, are 
most detestable, horrid, heinous, and abominable crimes of rebellion, 
treason, and lese-majesty, and are punishable with forfaulture of life, 
lands, heritages, and escheat of their moveables; and by the 129th act, 
8th parliament, King James VI., the royal power and authority in the 
person of the king's majesty, his heirs and successors, over all estates 
spiritual and temporal, within this realm, is ratified, approven, and 
perpetually confirmed, and it is thereby statute and ordained that his 
highness, his heirs and successors, by themselves and their council are, 
and in time to come shall be, judges competent to all persons his high- 
ness's subjects, of whatever estate, degree, function, or condition they 
be, of spiritual or temporal, in all matters wherein they, or any of them 
shall be apprehended, summoned, or charged to answer to such things 
as shall be speired at them by our sovereign lord, or his council, and 
that none of them that shall happen to be apprehended, called, or 
summoned to the effect aforesaid, presume or take upon hand to decline 
the judgment of his highness, his heirs, and successors, or their council, 

* Wodrow's Analecta, vol. iv., pp. 299-301. 



APPENDIX. 477 

under the pain of treason. And by the 10th act, 10th parliament, King 
James VI., it is statute and ordained, that all his highness's subjects 
content themselves in quietness and dutiful obedience to his highness 
and his authority, and that none of them presume nor take upon hand 
publicly to disclaim, or privately to speak or write any purpose of re- 
proach or slander to his majesty's person, estate, or government, or to 
deprave his laws and acts of parliament, or misconstrue his proceed- 
ings, whereby any misliking may be moved betwixt his highness, or 
his nobility, and loving subjects in time coming, under the pain of death, 
to be execut upon them with all rigor, as seditious and wicked instru- 
ments, enemies to his highness and the common weal of this realm. 
And by the 12th act of the same parliament of King James VI., it is 
statute and ordained that in time coming no league nor bonds be made 
among his majesty's subjects of any degree upon whatsomever color 
[or] pretence, without his highness's and his successor's privity, and 
consent had and obtained thereto, under the pain to be holden and ex- 
ecut as movers of sedition. And by the 2d act, 2d session of his 
majesty's first parliament, it is statute and ordained, that if any person 
or persons shall hereafter plot, contrive, or intend death or destruction 
to the king's majesty, or any bodily harm tending to death or destruc- 
tion, or to deprive, depose, or suspend him from the style, honor, and 
kingly name of the imperial crown of this kingdom, or any others his 
majesty's dominions, or to suspend him from the exercise of his royal 
government ; and shall, by writing, printing, or other malicious and 
advised speaking, express and declare such their treasonable intentions, 
after such persons being, upon sufficient probation, legally convict 
thereof, shall be deemed declared and adjudged traitors, and shall suffer 
forfaulture of life, lands, and goods, as in the cases of high treason : 
nevertheless, it is of verity that ye, the said Isabel Alison and Ma- 
rion Harvey, have presumed to commit and are guilty of the said 
crimes, in so far as ye have oft and diverse times receipt, maintained, 
supplied, intercommuned, and kept correspondence with Mr. Donald 
Cargill, Mr. Thomas Douglas, Mr. John Welsh, the deceased Mr. 
Richard Cameron, the bloody and sacrilegious murderers of the late 
archbishop of St. Andrews, and sundry other notorious traitors ; have 
heard the said ministers preach up treason and rebellion, and they and 
their associates having formed and devised a treasonable paper, called 
the Fanatics' New Covenant, whereby they covenant and bind them- 
selves to overthrow his majesty's power and authority, most treasona- 
bly asserting that the hands of our king and most part of the rulers 
have been against the throne of the Lord, the purity and power of re- 
ligion and godliness, and have degenerat into tyranny, have mani- 
festly rejected God, his service and reformation as a slavery, have gov- 
erned contrary to all laws, Divine and human, exercised tyranny and 
arbitrary government, oppressed men in their consciences and civil 
rights, used free subjects (Christians and reasonable men) with less dis- 
cretion than their beasts ; most horridly and treasonably declaring the 
king's government to be but a lustful rage, exercised with as little right, 



478 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

reason, and with more cruelty than in beasts, and the king himself, and the 
governors under him, to be public grassators and public judgments, which 
all men ought as earnestly to labor to be free of as of sword, famine, or 
pestilence raging among them ; declaring themselves obliged to execute 
God's judgment upon them, and that to uphold them is to uphold Satan's 
kingdom and to bear down Christ's; most solemnly, avowedly, and 
treasonably (therefore) rejecting the king's most sacred majesty, their 
gracious sovereign, a native prince, and those associat with him from 
being their rulers, declaring them henceforth to be no lawful rulers, 
and that they neither owe nor should yield any willing obedience to 
them ; and also declaring themselves as much bound in allegiance to devils 
as to them, they being (as they most treasonably say) the devil's vicege- 
rents and not God's ; and likewise the said monstrous traitors having pub- 
lished an execrable declaration at the market cross of Sanquhar, upon 
the 22d of June last, whereby they most treasonablv disown their sov- 
ereign and native prince, whom they call Charles Stewart, who hath 
been tyrannizing on the throne of Scotland, and government thereof 
forfaulted (as they treasonably pretend) several years since by this 
perjury and breach of covenant with God and his church, and other 
reasons therein mentioned ; most treasonably, therefore, denouncing 
and declaring war against their sacred sovereign (whom they call a 
tyrant and usurper) and all the men of his practices, as enemies to the 
Lord Jesus Christ, his house and covenants, and against such as have 
strengthened him, sided with him, or any ways acknowledged him in 
his usurpation and tyranny, civil and ecclesiastic ; as also the said 
traitorous rebels having entered into and subscribed a treasonable bond 
of combination against their sacred sovereign, wherein they openly and 
avowedly disown him as a perfidious covenant-breaker, usurper of the 
royal prerogatives of Jesus Christ, and encroacher upon the liberties 
of the church, a stated opponent to Jesus Christ himself (the Mediator), 
and to the free government of his house, as the said covenant declara- 
tion, and bond of combination, containing therein sundry other treason- 
able articles and clauses, in themselves at length purport ; the which 
horrid and treasonable papers, abominable and unchristian expressions, 
principles and opinions above-mentioned therein contained, ye, the said 
Isabel Alison and Marion Harvey, have judicially, in presence of the 
lords justice-clerk, and commissioners of justiciary, owned and adhered 
to, the same being read to you, because (as ye say) ye see nothing in 
them against the Scriptures, and have most treasonably declined the 
king's majesty's authority, and the authority of the lords justiciary, 
because (as ye most falsely and treasonably say) they carry the sword 
against the Lord. And ye, the said Marion Harvey, have most trea- 
sonably approven of the execrable excommunication used by Mr. 

Donald Cargill against his sacred sovereign at Torwood, upon the 

day of [Sept.] last, and likewise owned and approved of the killing of 
the archbishop of St. Andrews as lawful, declaring that he was as 
miserable a wretch as ever betrayed the kirk of Scotland ; of the which 
treasonable crimes above mentioned, ye, and ilk ane of you, are actors, 



APPENDIX. 479 

art and part, which heing found by an assize, ye ought to be punished 
with forfaultnre of life, land, and goods, to the terrors of others to com- 
mit the like hereafter." 



No. VII.— (P. 302 ) 

Apprehension of Hume of Graden, and the Scuffle in ivhick Thomas Ker, 

of Heyhope, was killed. 

This scene is particularly described (but who the writer was we are 
unable to determine) in a paper among the Wodrow MSS., entitled, 
" A true account of the cruel murder of Thomas Ker, brother to the 
laird of Cherrytrees, according to the relation of some who were pres- 
ent, which I find among my father's papers, as follows : I come 
now to the tragical passage of our dear friend's murder, Thomas Ker, 
Cherrytrees' brother. Graden Hume, being with my Lord Hume, at 
dinner, was speaking somewhat freely to him, and after dinner, my 
lord takes him aside, and tells him he might take him if he would, and 
that the king had sent an express to Colonel Struthers to apprehend all 
vagrant Scots that were in Northumberland. Whereupon Graden, 
without taking leave, came straight to Crookum, where were Thomas 
Ker, young Bukum, Henry Hall, Alexander Hume, and Hector Aird 
(who were then sheltering, the persecution being now so hot in their 
bounds), and presseth them to go from that place, and not to stay all 
night ; which they did, though late. But Graden, being wearied, lies 
down in their bed, and at midnight the party comes and apprehends 
Graden, and carries him first to my Lord Hume, and from thence to 
Hume castle. Our friends, hearing of it, send to advertise some more 
friends for his rescue ; and they go to Crookum, where the tryst was 
set to wait the party's coming that way. However, there came none 
but whom I have named, and after they had stayed a little at the 
place, they are advertised that the party was gone another way, which 
put them to consult what to do next. In the meantime comes there 
one telling them Struthers is at hand with his party. They, not judg- 
ing it could be so, thinking he had been gone with Graden, Ker comes 
to the door, and while he is walking there, smoking his pipe, he dis- 
covers the party, and immediately calls his friends to draw their horses, 
and draws his own first, resolving not to be taken, but thought to have 
taken a by-way, thinking Struthers would have passed them. How- 
ever, when Ker mounts, one Squire Martins, Sir John Martins, the 
mayor of Newcastle's son, Struthers' nephew, would by all means 
challenge our friend, contrary [to] the rest, their inclination, and com- 
ing up to Ker, asked who he was. He answered, he was a gentleman. 
He says, ' Be taken, dog.' Ker says, ' Where is your order V Upon 
which he drew his pistol, and shot Ker in the belly. Immediately Ker 
fired, and shot him dead through the head ; and after, Ker, finding 
himself deadly wounded, ran upon the party, and fired his other pistol, 
and then drew his sword, and fought while he was able to sit on horse- 
back, and then dropped down, yet wrestled on his knees, and prayed, 



480 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

while the rest were righting, till his breath was gone. Our friends 
fought while they were able. Alexander Hume is run through the 
body; Henry Hall is shot through the arm: all sorely wounded, but 
hopes of their recovery. The English, some mortally wounded, and 
two killed, with two of their best horses, valued at 100 pieces. Our 
friends, being disabled, retired, and the enemy durst not pursue them. 
Struthers comes to Ker while his breath was hardly out, and he and 
all of them run their swords in him, and takes by the heels and trails 
him through the puddle, and then flings him on a dunghill. They 
would not let bury his corpse, till a party of friends went in and 
brought it away. This is the truest account of it I can learn."* 



No. VIII.— (P. 314.) 
The Fiery Cross] carried through the Shire of Moray, in 1679. 

That the design in carrying the fiery cross through the shire at this 
time was to prevent the heritors and militia from going out to assist the 
king's host, was an allegation which, after the closest investigation, 
remained unproved. To protect the country from the M'Donalds 
seems to have been the sole object of those with whom its mission 
originated on that occasion, though they may have been misinformed 
as to the hostile intention of the M'Donalds. But of this the reader 
may judge for himself, from the evidence collected on this subject by 
the commissioners of the privy council at Elgin, some years after, and 
which is as follows : — 

41 February 3, 1685. 
"In presence of the earls of Errol and Kintore, and Sir George Monro. 

" Alexaxder Brodie, of Lethin, being solemnly sworn, upon his 
great oath, depones he received a letter from his daughter, the Lady 
Grant, about the time of the going out of the king's host, informing him 
of the M'Donalds coming down upon the country, and that the laird of 

" Wodrow MSS., vol. xxxii., folio, No. 175. 

t The use of the fiery cross by the highland chieftains, for summoning their clans 
to a place of rendezvous upon any sudden or important emergency was common in 
the olden time. It was also called Crean Tarigh, or the Cross of Shame, because 
disobedience to what the symbol implied, inferred infamy. One of the ends of the 
horizontal piece was either burnt or burning, and a piece of linen or white cloth 
stained with blood, was suspended from the other end ; and then the signal was de- 
livered from hand to hand, till it had passed through the whole territories of the 
clan, which it did with incredible celerity. "At the sight of the fiery cross, every 
man from sixteen years old to sixty, capable of bearing arms, was obliged instantly 
to repair in his best accoutrements to the place of rendezvous. He who failed to 
appear, suffered the extremities of fire and sword, which were emblematically de- 
nounced to the disobedient, by the bloody and burned marks upon this warlike sig- 
nal." — Sir Walter Scott. On June 9, lti85, by order of the privy council, this sig- 
nal was sent through the west of Fife and Kinross as nearer to Stirling, that all 
betwixt sixty and sixteen might rise and oppose Argyll and his forces. — Fountain- 
hall's Decisions, vol. i., p. 364. This is, perhaps, the last instance in which the fiery 
cross was sent round by the command of the government. It often made its circuit, 
by the direction of the highland chieftains, during the rebellions of 1715 and 1745. — 
Brown's History of the Highlands, vol. i., p. 129. 



APPENDIX. 481 

Grant was gone through the country among his friends to advise what 
to do ; and depones that being called to a burial at Auldearn, he showed 
the letter to the gentlemen present, and thereafter, at a meeting of the 
gentry of the shires of Moray and Nairn, it was resolved to send Cap- 
tain Stewart express to the earl of Moray, to advise what to do; and 
this is the truth, as he shall answer to God ; depones the earl of Moray 
sent an answer, and the militia was ordered to come out with all dili- 
gence. "Alexander Brodie. 

41 Alexander Tulloch, of Tannahies, being solemnly sworn, .... 
depones, at the time the heritors were called out to the king's host, the 
time of Bothwell bridge, there came a fiery cross through the country 
from the west, which surprised the people, and put them in a fright, 
as if Mr. M'Donald were coming to invade the country, which was 
altogether false, and supposed by the loyal party to be done of purpose 
by the disaffected, to impede the heritors from going to the king's host. 

" Alexander Tulloch. 

" John Cdmming of Logie, being solemnly sworn, depones, when 
he was busy convening the militia, and furnishing them with ammuni- 
tion, there came an alarm of a fiery cross through Moray, as if it were 
to be invaded by the M'Donald's, which, he apprehends, was to inter- 
rupt the king's service, and hinder the militia and heritors to go out to 
the king's host, there being no such thing as M'Donalds invading the 
country : Depones it was reported to have come from the highlands 
and from Strathspey. " John Cumming. 

" George Kat, procurator-fiscal of Moray, being sworn, upon oath, 
depones he saw the fiery cross, that came through Moray, the time of 
the going out of the king's host, as the same came to Elgin: Depones 
it was a fiery stick, kindled at both ends, and set upon a pole, and car- 
ried in a man's hand, and so affrighted the country, and the town of 
Elgin, that they kept a guard of thirty men nightly : Depones the 
name of the person who carried the fiery cross from this, is [John] 
Proctor, as he remembers, but knows not who brought [it] ; Depones 
the bearer of the cross alarmed the country with the invasion of the 
M'Donalds, but never anything followed thereupon, nor did the M'Don- 
alds come down : Depones the cross came from Strathspey or the braes 
of Moray, from the west, as they w r ere informed ; and this is the truth, 
as he shall answer to God. " George Kat. 

" Sir Alex. Innes of Carlestoun, depones he heard of a fiery cross 
that came through Moray the time they were going to the king's host, 
and that Robert Innes, por. [portioner] of Urquhart, took it out of the 
man's hand that brought it there, and waved it before the minister, fore 
[before] the time of sermon: Depones he heard it came from Cald- 
er, or Lethin, or Old Brodie, and he heard the other night, that Lethin 
took out a paper at that time, which he said was a letter from Sraths- 
pey, which informed him that the M'Donalds were coming down upon 
the country : Depones the M'Donalds were not near the country, nor 
41 



482 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

near those places from which the alarm came, hut all was designed of 
purpose to fright the country, and hinder them to go out to the king's 
host, as he heard. " Alexander Innes. 

" Elgin, February 4, JR85. 
" In presence of the earls of Errol and Kintore, and Sir George 
Monro. 

" John Proctor, tailor in Elgin, depones he was the man that car- 
ried the fiery cross from this town to Urquhart, and that he got if from 
the magistrates, and that the man that brought it did alarm the country, 
as if the M'Donalds were presently coming down to slay them ; all 
which so affrighted the town that they kept strong guards : Depones lie 
heard it came from the highlands and Strathspey, and that it was de- 
signed, as has been since believed, to hinder the people to go out to the 
king's host : Depones it came from the kirk of Birney ; and this is the 
truth, as he shall answer to God : Depones he can not write. 

" Errol. 

"Kintore. 

44 G. Monro. 

"Alexander Kinnaird of Culbin, depones . . . that about the time 
thrv were going out to the king's host, there was a report and alarm 
raised, as if the M'Donalds were coming down to invade the country ; 
whereupon there was a meeting of the gentry convened at, Auldearn, 
among whom his father was one, and that there Lethin took out a let- 
ter which, he said, came from Strathspey, which informed him that 
the M'Donalda were coming down; whereupon the gentlemen took 
care for their security, and his father closed up his papers in a stone 
wall: Depones about that time there came a fiery cross through the 
country, which gave them the same alarm, and that there was no such 
thing as the M'Donalds coming down, but all was done on design to 
keep the people from going out to the king's host. 

"Alexander Kinnaird. 

"Thomas Kinnaird, elder, of Culbin, being solemnly sworn, de- 
pones that there was a meeting of the gentry convened at Auldearn by 
Lethin, at which most of the gentlemen in that part of the country 
were present, and there Lethin produced a letter which, he said, had 
come from Strathspey, from Grant, which informed him that the 
M'Donalds were coming down to invade the country, and there he pro- 
posed and advised that the gentlemen should stay at home and guard 
the country, and not go out to the king's host: Depones the letter was 
read, and he remembers there was this expression in it, that M'Donald 
said he should dine at Brodie, and sup at the seaside; which affrighted 
the country ; and that, at the same time, there went a fiery cross 
through the country, which gave the same alarm : Depones he himself, 
and several of the gentrj' present, opposed the motion of staying at 
home, and that, having secured his papers in a stone wall, he and his 
son and several of his servants went out against the rebels : And this 
is the truth, as he shall answer to God. " Thomas Kinnaird. 



APPENDIX. 483 

" Francis Wiseman, one of the bailies of Elgin, being solemnly 
sworn, depones that the very sabbath before the people went out against 
the rebels, there came a fiery cross from Birney to Elgin, and that it 
was talked that it had come from Knockandoch to Birney, and that 
it alarmed them that Mr. M'Donald was presently coming down upon 
the country, which so frighted them that they kept strong guards about 
the town : Depones it came to Elgin in the hands of a servant of John 
Dikeside's as he was informed : And this is the truth, as he shall an- 
swer to God. " Francis Wiseman. 

"John Innes of Dikeside, in Birney parish, depones that the time 
the heritors were going out to Bothwell bridge against the rebels, 
there was a fiery cross that came through the country, to alarm the 
country, as if the M'Donalds were coming down to take all away, 
which so affrighted the people, that it put a stop to the going out of 
the gentry and militia against the rebels for eight days : Depones the 
cross came down from Gedloch, by a servant of John Leslie's of Mid- 
dletoun, to him, and the deponent gave it to Peter Kynes, his servant, 
who carried it in to the provost of Elgin : And this is the truth, as he 
shall answer to God. " John Innes. 

" Mr. John Cumming, minister at Birney, being solemnly sworn, 
depones that the time the people were making ready to go against the 
rebels, there came a fiery cross through the country, from Rothes to 
the parish of Birney, and they said it came from Strathspey to that, 
and that the alarm went that M'Donald was in the braes of Badenoch 
with men in arms, or thereabout, and that the laird of Grant was ma- 
king ready, and raising men to oppose him ; and depones, this so af- 
frighted the country, that they were afraid to leave their houses to go 
out to the king's host, as he judged : And this is all he presently re- 
members, and the truth, as he shall answer to God. 

" John Cumming, minister at Birney. 

" Mr. John Leslie, minister at Rothes, depones there came a fiery 
cross from the parish of Dallas to the parish of Rothes, the time the 
heritors were going out against the rebels, which strangely alarmed the 
country, as if M'Donald were coming with a thousand men to invade 
the country, and it was a falsehood, and was looked upon by honest men 
to be done of purpose and design to retard the king's service : And this 
is the truth, as he shall answer to God. " John Leslie. 

"Archibald Grant of Balmholm, solemnly sworn, depones he 
lives in Knockandoch parish, and that the time the heritors and militia 
were convening to go out against the rebels at Bothwell bridge, there 
came a fiery cross from Kirkdals, which is in Knockandoch parish, 
down the country, to his house, and from that to Rothes, and down to 
the sea : Depones the cross went from house to house, and was changed 
from hand to hand, to give the quicker alarm, and that the report went 
with it that M'Donald was in the hills coming down to invade the coun- 
try, which strongly affrighted the people, and retarded their going out 



484 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

against the rebels, but the deponent himself went to serve the kind's 
host, against the rebels: And this is the truth, as he shall answer to 
God. " Archibald Grant."* 



No. IX.— (p. 314) 
Desired Extension of the Indulgence to Morayshire. 

Though no active measures were taken at Edinburgh by the com- 
missioners referred to in the text, for the extension of the indulgence to 
Morayshire, the entertainment of the question by the presbyterians in 
the north, was displeasing to the government, and the commissioners 
of the privy council which met at Elgin, in 1685, made particular in- 
quiries as to this matter. The depositions of such as were examint d 
in regard to it, extracted from the records of their proceedings, may be 
interesting to the reader. They are as follows : — 

"Elgin, Feb. 10, 1G85. 

"In presence of the earls of Errol and Kintore, and Sir George 
Monro. 

" Sir Hugh Campekll of Calder, being solemnly sworn, depones 
that about July 10, 1G79, he being come to Brodie to visit his uncle, 
he can not say whether he was called or came accidentally, his uncle 
being then unwell, he used to come oft and visit him : Depones when 
he came there he found several pentlemen, such as Grant, Grange, 
Lethin, Kinsterie, Milntoun, Windiehill, young Lines, and Donald 
Campbell, the deponent's brother, and some others, to whom and to 
the deponent Brodie told that he was informed that the king's majesty 
had granted an indulgence to those be-south Tay, and that if it were 
known that any there had a mind to have the like indulgence, it might 
be obtained. It was spoke of whether a petition might be drawn to 
that purpose, but the deponent said it was against law, and was not to 
be done. The next thing was thought on was to send a gentleman or 
two to Edinburgh, to see what was in the matter, and whether such a 
thing was feasible, and it was proposed that young Lines and Donald 
Campbell should go. But they excusing themselves at that time, Bro- 
die desired Grange to go; but he declined it, or to do any anything by 
himself, although he seemed to have some other affairs at Edinburgh. 
Whereupon Brodie pressed the deponent to go with him, in respect he 
knew he was to go very shortly, however; which, at Brodie's desire, he 
condescended to do, and to give him his advice, when upon the place, 
if he could see that anything could be done without giving offence. 
Whereupon there was a letter written, and left blank upon the back, 
that Grange and the deponent might fill up any person's name there 
thev should think fit. if they saw any ground to think that their desires 
could be granted. The letter was but short, narrating what we heard, 
and desiring to inform himself whether an indulgence might be ob- 
tained ; and the only argument as he remembers proposed in the letter 

* Warants of Privy Council. 



APPENDIX. 485 

was lhat none of the subscribers had ever been at any field-conventi- 
cle, and had never joined in arms, and never should join in arms with 
any person who had, or should take arms against the king's person, or 
authority: Depones likewise, that the deponent does not mind how 
much money should have been collected for the expense of any who 
should [have] been employed in case the affair could have been prose- 
cute, but the deponent well remembers that Donald Campbell, hig 
brother, did collect five hundred pounds Scots, and some little odds, 
which money, with the letter above mentioned, was given to the laird 
of Grange ; and within a few days after the deponent and he came to Ed- 
inburgh, Grange asked the deponent what to do with the letter, and he 
advised him to destroy it, which was accordingly done; and when 
Grange came home, leaving the deponent at Edinburgh, he left the five 
hundred pounds, and odd money, with the deponent, to be given to his 
brother, who was not then arrived at Edinburgh, and accordingly the 
deponent held compt with his brother anent it. This is all he remem- 
bers of the affair, according to his present knowledge and memory, as 
he shall answer to God : Depones the letter was subscribed (for what 
the deponent knows) by all that were present, and that the deponent 
himself did contribute no money : Depones Mr. Robert Martin came 
to the deponent, and dealt with him, that he might be employed to ne- 
gotiate to obtain the indulgence, but the deponent absolutely declined 
to employ him, but caused destroy the letter relating to it, as is above 
said. "H. C. of Calder. 

" Ludovick Grant, of that ilk, being solemnly sworn, depones he 
was at Brodie eight or ten days after their return from Bothwell or 
thereby, where there were present Calder, Grange, Lethin, Innes 
younger, and other gentlemen, and a letter was drawn and signed by 
them, but not direct on the back, but to have been backed for any of 
the statesmen should be thought most fit, that they might deal for pro- 
curing the indulgence to be extended to this country, and the letter was 
given to Calder and Grange, who carried it south, and the affair was 
referred to their management : Depones there was money to have been 
given to Calder and Grange, for their expense in going to Edinburgh. 
And this is the truth, as he shall answer to God. 

" Ludovick Grant. 

" Thomas Dunbar of Grange, being solemnly sworn, depones that 
Innes younger told the deponent, about the 12th of July, 1679, that 
there was an indulgence granted to the west and south of Scotland, and 
within a few days thereafter he had occasion to be at my Lord Bro- 
die's house seeing him, where there was Innes younger, Calder, Grant, 
Kilravock, Lethin, Milntoun, and Donald Campbell ; and being dis- 
coursing anent the indulgence, old Brodie told that he had got some 
advertisement that there was indulgence granted, and thought, if we 
moved any such thing, we might have the like favor granted to us : 
whereupon the gentlemen above named resolved. that they would draw 
a letter ; which accordingly was done, the contents whereof were in 
41* 



486 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

these terms : That forasmuch as his majesty had been graciously pleased 
to grant indulgence to the south and west parts of Scotland, and who 
had been in actual rebellion against his majesty, and kept field con- 
venticles, the like whereof had never been in these parts of Scot- 
land, and we hoped there never should be such practices found among 
us, that therefore their lordships would be pleased to try if his majesty 
would be pleased to extend his gracious favor to this place of the coun- 
try. This letter was left blank upon the back as to the address, till it 
should be considered whether it should have been addressed to my 
lord chancellor or my lord secretary. Young Innes and Donald Camp- 
bell were desired to go south with the letter. Donald Campbell could 
not go at that time, and Innes would not go without him. Whereupon 
the laird of Caliler and the deponent being going, however, the letter 
was given to them, that they might try what might be gotten done in 
the matter; and they having come to Edinburgh, he thinks before the 
20th of July, found that there was no place for moving in that matter, 
but rather that the indulgence granted was like to be retracted, they 
did not move at all, less or more, but tore the letter, and came home 
how soon they had done their business : Depones Mr. Robert Martin 
would be intruding himself upon the employment, but they gave him 
none : And this is the truth, as he shall answer to God. 

"Thomas Dunbar. 

"Francis Brodie of Milntoun, being solemnly sworn, depones that 
about the beginning of July, 1679. being at Brodie at a meeting where 
there were present Grant, Grange, Calder, Innes younger, Kilravock, 
and some others (but remembers not if Fitgavenie was there), there 
was a letter drawn which he conceives was direct to the chancellor, or 
lords of privy council, and a warrant or instructions given to young 
Innes and Donald Campbell, to go south, to deal and negotiate that this 
country might participate of his majesty's favor and indulgence granted 
to those in the south and west of Scotland ; and money was to have 
been given for their expense as he heard, but himself gave none : And 
this is the truth, as he shall answer to God. 

" Francis Brodie, 
"Errgl, 
" Kintore, 
" G. Monro."* 



No. X.— (p. 350.) 

Sense in ivhich the Covenanters refused to say " God save the King." 

Though it is incorrect to affirm that Margaret Wilson refused to 
save her life by saying " God save the king," yet many of the. cove- 
nanters no doubt refused to say this even to save their lives. It would, 
however, be to take a very superficial view of the case, to ascribe this 
to a foolish obstinacy. They were quite ready to use the words in the 

* Warrants of Privy Council. 



APPENDIX. 487 

spirit of that exhortation of Paul: "I exhort, therefore, that, first of 
all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be marie 
for all men ; for kings and for all that are in authority ; that we may 
lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty" (1 Tim. 
ii. 1, 2). The sense in which they declined to say "God save the 
king" was the sense put upon the words by their persecutors — a sense 
which implied an acknowledgment not only of the king's civil suprema- 
cy, which all the presbyterians, with the exception of the Cameronians, 
were ready to make, but also of his ecclesiastical supremacy, an ac- 
knowledgment which none of them could consistently make, as, accord- 
ing to their principles, this would have been sacrilegiously to yield to 
him that headship over the church which Christ claims as his exclu- 
sive and inalienable prerogative. When, in August, 1684, John Camp- 
bell of Over-Welwood, in Ayrshire, was imprisoned in Glasgow, Wind- 
ram asked him if he would pray for the king. Campbell answered 
that he both did and would pray that the Lord would enable him to 
live a godly life here, and bestow upon him a life of glory hereafter. 
" That is not enough," said Windram ; " you must pray for King Charles 
II. as he is supreme over all persons and causes, ecclesiastical as well 
as civil." Campbell replied that in his opinion that was " praying for 
him as the head of the church, which belonged only to Christ; and he 
reckoned it arrogance in any creature whatsoever to claim it." — Wod- 
row's History, vol. iv., p. 49. 



No. XL— (p. 377.) 

Countess of Argyll's Sympathy with the Covenanters. 

In illustration of this lady's benevolent sympathy with and favor for 
the persecuted presbyterians, we may here insert the two following 
letters, addressed to " Mr. Robert Miller, merchant in the exchange 
at Edinburgh;" which refer to some individual not named, who was 
evidently suffering for nonconformity, and in whom she felt deeply in- 
terested : — 

Letter I. 

" Stirling, September 8, 1683. 
" Loving Friend : I received yours, for which I heartily thank 
you. I was both satisfied and grieved to read all you sent me. My 
heart felt what he was suffering, as much as any alive ; for I both love 
and respect that person, and, were it fit for me, would go far to do him 
any good. But I hope in Him [that he] who is merciful, and hath a 
care of his own, and also of the innocent, will show his sovereign power, 
and not only preserve him, but bring him through this his trouble, and 
reward all does [who do] him good. I spoke to my Lady Arroll for 
him, and I think it were not amiss his sister Mary came in, and spake 
to her and the Lady Largo, and tell her all that belongs him remem- 
bers their kindness to their father, and that even he expects they will 



488 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

do him good in what is in their power. I was much for Mary's going 
to England. I wish she could go yet, and that your affairs would 
allow you. I shall not ofTer to desire it absolutely; but since you go 
once a year, I would be in your debt five pounds, so you could go and 
assist him, and take Mary with you; and she being a woman and a 
sister, might venture where it were not fit to you to go. I should write. 
with her to some, and you would be able to advise her, and do things 
she could not do. I went and spoke to the advocate ere he went, and 

he and his lady promised to do Mr. YV all the service they could ; 

and her woman, Mrs. Carintoun, promised to mind them. So the 
sooner any go, it were the better. Let your cousin Mary know of all 
that you sent to me; and it you kept the cipher of them, ler her see 
them and advise with her lady, who I am sure will not hinder her to 
go, and I doubt not will assist* bim, and I think so should all that con- 
cerns him for whom he is innocently suffering, only because he served 
him he is suspected. The great God direct well all that may contrib- 
ute for his relief and advantage. I expect to hear by the bearer from 
you : so adieu ! 

" P. S. — The enclosed I would have you to send with some sure 
hand to Fife, to my Sophia. If you will be pleased to speak to George 
M'Kenzie, or his man, to send any of my son's servants to you, that i9 
going to Fife, he will do it." 

Letter II. 

"Loving Friend: Since your own affairs takes you not where I 
wished you to go, I will not take on me to send you. But if you had 
been to go, I would have been content with all my heart to have been, 
as I said, five pounds in your debt, so you could have served your wor- 
thy cousin, and been useful to him at this time. Had I had the money 
beside me when I wrote, I had sent it you ; and had I money, or 
could get my own, I could have sent one with a better sum, if it could 
contribute to his good, for whom I have a real kindness; for the Lord, 
1 hope, will be in place of all to him, and let the world see his inno- 
cence and faithfulness. If I have time, I will write to your cousin 
Mary. I have time to say no more but ."* 



No. XII.— (p. 384.) 
A Letter of the Earl of Argyll to his Lady, in Ciphers. 

This letter was probably written after he heard that the conspiracy 
was discovered ; and it abounds in mute ciphers. It is as follows: — 

* These two letters are printed from copies obligingly communicated by David 
Laing, Esq , Signet Library. Tbere is a letter written by the same lady to Mr. 
Robert Douglas, dated Loudon, August 21, 1669, in vol. xxvi., folio. No. 112 of the 
Wodrow MSS. But this letter I have not seen. The volume in which it is to be 
found is probably in the possession of the very Rev. Principal Lee. 



APPENDIX. 489 

"32 67 48 45 25 43 24 51 26 41 44 36 51 40 43 44 69 28 37 26 54 56 

48 57 53 52 39 44 56 27 47 44 29 48 57 39 50 53 57 58 22 53 53 40 50 

48 52 58 57 64 54 59 56 54 53 57 44 57 68 58 47 56 48 42 44 51 69 2 L 

56 44 43 57 51 40 43 44 28 54 56 53 54 53 58 48 58 48 53 52 20 53 45 
44 59 44 56 62 67 58 47 48 52 40 32 51 48 46 47 58 57 44 42 59 56 44 
39 41 56 40 52 43 60 48 58 47 53 59 58 40 41 53 61 64 58 47 44 52 58 
53 43 44 40 50 44 60 48 58 47 41 48 56 42 57 41 59 58 48 58 48 57 52 
53 58 58 40 50 49 48 52 46 60 48 50 43 53 44 48 58 64 60 47 50 58 48 

57 74 40 54 44 52 44 43 52 44 44 43 97 52 53 58 47 48 52 43 44 56 41 
59 58 57 47 53 59 50 43 45 59 56 58 47 44 56 44 51." 

The above letter deciphered, and mutes pointed out:* m stands 
for mute : — 

mm m Duke m Monmouth mm mm m m m 

" 32 67 If 25 D 27 M 26 be 36 made 69 28 prison39er, 27 he 29 
is 39 lost 22 to all intents and purposes. 68. Thrice Mr. 6921 Redf 

m m m m m Scotland 

made 28 proposition 20 of every 67 thing 32 might secure 39 Brand 

battle England 

without a box, and then to deal with Birch ; but it is not talking will 
do it; and what has happened need not hinder, but should further 
them."J 



No. XIII.— (P. 394.) 

Extracts from a Letter of the Countess of Argyll, to her Son, Colin, Earl 
of Balcarres. 

The letter from which the following extracts are taken, was written 
by the countess to her son, after his marriage, at an early age, to Mad- 
emoiselle Mauritia de Nassau, daughter of Louis de Nassau, count of 
Beverwaert and Auverquerque, in Holland, || by Elizabeth, countess 
of Horn. The particulars of the marriage have more than the interest 
of romance. The young Mauritia had fallen in love with Colin, who 
was extremely handsome, at his first presentation at the court of Charles 
II. ; and, ere long, the day was fixed for their marriage. " The prince 
of Orange, afterward William III., presented his fair kinswoman, on 
this joyful occasion, with a pair of magnificent emerald ear-rings, as 
his wedding-gift. The day arrived, the noble party were assembled in 
the church, and the bride was at the altar; but, to the dismay of the 

* As, by the alphabet made use of in this letter, 40 stands for the letter a, 41 for b, 
and soon till you come to 64, which stands for & ; the way to distinguish the mutes 
from the significant ciphers is, to observe whether any two figures fall within the 
compass of the alphabet from 40 to 64. Thus, the figures 32, 67, at the beginning 
of the letter, are mutes, 32 being a number below the first cipher, and 67 a number 
above the last 

t This alludes to a plan which Mr. Carstairs had formed for surprising the castle 
of Edinburgh. X Carstairs' State Papers, p. 107. 

|| Natural son of Maurice, prince of Orange. 



490 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

company, no bridegroom appeared ! The volatile Colin had forgotten 
ihe day of his marriage, alid was discovered in his night-gown and 
slippers, quietly eating his breakfast! Thus far the tale is told with 
a smile on the lip, but many a tear was shed at the conclusion. Colin 
hurried to the church, but in his haste left the ring in his writing-case ; 
a friend in the company gave him one — the ceremony went on, and, 
without looking at it, he placed it on the finger of his fair young bride. 
It was a mourning-ring, with the morthead and crossed bones. On 
perceiving it at the close of the ceremony, she fainted away ; and the 
evil omen had made such an impression on her mind that, on recover- 
ing, she declared she should die within the year, and her presentiment 
was too truly fulfilled. 

"It was in t hi; joy of seeing Colin established, to all appearance, so 
happily for life, that his mother addressed him an admirable letter of 
advice, moral, religious, political and domestic. No subject is left un- 
touched, of which a mother would be anxious to impress right ideas on 
a son." 

She thus writes in the beginning : " Because the interest of the soul 
is preferable to that of the body, I shall first desire you to be serious in 
your religion, worshipping your God, and let your dependence be con- 
stantly upon him for all things; the first step in it is to believe in God, 
that he made and upholds the universe in wisdom, in goodness, and in 
justice; that we must adore, obey him, and approve of all he does, 
The fear of God. says Solomon, is the beginning of knowledge; he is 
a buckler to all that walk uprightly. Dedicate some certain time eve- 
ry day to the service of your glorious Maker and Redeemer; in that, 
take a survey of your life, shorter or longer, as the time will permit ; 
thank him for making you what you are — for redeeming you, giving 
you his Word and Spirit, and that you live under the gospel — for all 
the faculties of your soul and body — that you are descended of Chris- 
tian parents — for your provisions — for all you have in possession. 
Read, pray; consider the life and death of your blessed Savior and 
Lord, and your heart will be warmed with that love that is beyond ex- 
pression, that meekness and humility that endured the contradiction of 
sinners against himself. Strive to conform to him ; no fraud, no guile, 
no evil-speaking was found with him, for all the injustice and wicked 
backbiting he met with; he was kind, doing alwavs good. He for- 
gave, was patient in enduring injuries, was charitable. My dear son, 
the great work to which we are called is to be partakers of his holy, 
harmless nature ; true religion stands in imitating of him and converge 
with him. 'Truly,' says the apostle John, 'our fellowship is with 
the Father and the Son.' David says, ' Evening, and morning, and 
mid-day, will I pray to Thee.' We have directions and examples in 
the Holy Word for what we should do ; and we are told to watch and 
pray that we be not led into temptation (they are oft most afraid of 
them that are most resolved and best acquainted to resist them) ; to 
implore his help for supply of grace and strength, or of what we need ; 
and to encourage us to it, he says none shall seek his face in vain. He 



APPENDIX. 491 

gives us his Holy Word that we may daily read out of it Divine les- 
sons; it is a lantern to our feet to walk cleanly, and sure it is for in- 
struction and direction in righteousness; read often of the life and 
death of your Savior; read the book of Psalms, Proverbs, and Eccle- 
siastes ; often the Epistles, not neglecting the other Scriptures; for 
other books, I would have you read those most that will make you 
know the Scriptures and your duty ; and yourself must make con- 
science of your duty to your particular relations." 

To his prince she inculcates loyalty and reverence ; to his country, 
love and protection ; reminding him, however, that public characters 
are unhappy, except in times when virtue is loved for its own sake. 
"Strive," says she, "to enrich your mind with virtue, and let it be 
attended with the golden chain of knowledge, temperance, patience, 
godliness, brotherly kindness, and charity." Possessed of these, 
" though you were bereft of all the world can give you or take from 
you, you are justly to be accounted happy." 

Friendship she holds as the choicest earthly blessing, but she gives 
her son important cautions and advices on the subject. "Where the 
fear of God is not," says she, " and the practice of Christian virtues, 
that friendship can not stand long ; there is certainly a secret curse in 
that friendship whereof God is not the foundation and the end. Let 
not the least jealousy of your faithful friend enter into your mind, but 
whatever he do, think it was well intended ; in some cases it is better 
to be deceived than distrust." 

Yet "though friendship be the greatest solace of life, it proves not 
always firm enough to repose the soul absolutely upon. The fixedness 
of all things here below depends on God, who would have us to fix all 
our peace and contentment, even this we enjoy in the creatures, on 
himself. There is great reason for it. It's much if our friend's judg- 
ment, affection, and interest, long agree ; if there be but a difference in 
any of these, it doth much to mar all, the one being constrained to 
love that the other loves not ; one of you may have a friend whose 
favor may make great breaches, an Ahithophel or a Ziba ; our Savior 
had those who followed him for interest, that did soon forsake him, and 
turned his betrayers and enemies. If one of you be calmer nor [than] 
the other, and allows not all the other does out of humor, this causes 
mistakes. As a man is, so is his strength. A virtuous, faithful friend, 
whose ways are ordered of God, who is of a sweet, equal, cheerful 
humor, not jealous, not easily made to break the friendship he hath 
made on good grounds, which is understood to be kindled from heaven, 
is certainly the greatest jewel on earth. But if God so dispose of it, 
that your friends, though the nearest relations on earth, change to you, 
strive to be constant to them, and to overcome all with patience. Let 
meekness smooth over all their passions, espouse their interest, pursue 
them with kindness and serviceableness of all kinds, seek reconciliation 
on any terms, amend what they think amiss. Let ingenuity be in all 
your words and actions ; put on charity, which is the bond of perfec- 
tion, which suffereth long, is kind, envieth not ; forbear upbraiding 



492 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

or repeating what you have done to oblige them, but look on what you 
do for your friends, and their acceptance of it, as that wherefore you 
are most indebted to them; from those you are engaged to in friend- 
ship strive to be content with frowns as well as smiles ; bear all their 
infirmities, considering they must bear yours. 

" To be kind to your sisters is not only the earnest desire of vour 
mother, who lodged you all in her womb; but what is far more, it is 
commanded you by the Spirit of God to add to your faith and virtue, 
' brotherly kindness.' ' A brother,' says Solomon, 'is born for adver- 
sity. 1 If it be enjoined us to bear this kindness to all that love God, 
our Lord and Father, far more are you to bear it to your sisters, who 
are both lovers of God, and your own sisters also. 'A brother loves 
at all times,' saith Solomon. They have you now for their lather; lie 
kind to them as he was, and live as you would have yours to do alter 
you are gone. God, I hope, will requite your brotherly care and 
kindness with a blessing to you in your own. St. John saith, he that 
loves his brother (I may say sisters also) lives in light, and there is no 
occasion of stumbling in him. Good Abraham said to Lot, ' Let not 
strife be betwixt thee and me, and thy servants and mine, we are 
brethren.' Our Savior has told us, 'A family divided can not stand ;' 
and saith the Spirit of God, ' How pleasant it is to see brethren to 
dwell together in unity !' A threefold cord is not easily broken ; how 
pleasant, how easy it is to live in love, and to do our duty to all ! 
Their virtue, I hope, will make you love and trust them." 

To regard his wife as the dearest friend of his bosom (" Believe it." 
she says, "no man is happy but he that is so in his own house,"), to 
educate his children in the fear and love of God, in truth and 
knowledge, telling them " of the virtues of those who have been before 
them, that they may do nothing base or unworthy that looks like de- 
generating from them," "to maintain an orderly and religious house* 
hold, shunning whisperers and flatterers, that sail with all winds;" to 
be kind to his servants in their vigor, and careful of them in age and 
sickness; to love, rather than hate his enemies; and, to extend his 
charity beyond the external duties of a Christian toward the poor and 
afflicted, to the regulations of his opinions with regard to others, ques- 
tioning his own, rather than their judgment; learning of his Savior to 
be meek, and remembering that " God was not in the thunder or the 
fire, but in the calm, still voice ;" to be modest in society abroad, and 
to look on the careful management of his afTairs at home as a duty — 
these, and many other incidental duties, are enforced with affection as 
tender as the language is energetic. 

"Your good grandfather, Lord David," she concludes, "thought 
that day misspent he knew not some new thing. He was a very stu- 
dious and diligent man in his affairs. You that have such a closet 
[library], such gardens, and so much to do within doors and without, 
need not think the time tedious, nor be idle; it is the hand of the dil- 
igent maketh rich. The good man orders his affairs with discretion ; 



APPENDIX. 493 

it is the diligent that is the only person fit for government ; Solomon 
saith, his thoughts tend to plenteousness, and he may stand before 
kings. 

" My care hath been great for you and your family, and you may 
see by this, I will be always, my dear son, your kind mother, 

"Anna Argyll."* 



No. XIV.— (P. 408.) 
The Sufferings of Sir Duncan Campbell of Auckinbreck. 

The account in the text is confirmed by a " petition of Sir Duncan 
Campbell for himself and his distressed friends, tenants, and vassals, 
in Knapdale, Glassary, and Kelislait," presented to the estates of par- 
liament after the revolution. Referring to his having taken up arms 
with the earl of Argyll, in 1685, "in defence of the protestant religion, 
and in opposition to popery and arbitrary power," the petition states 
that the " petitioner having, from his sense of the justice and necessity 
of the said earl, his undertaking, and for the defence of the country, 
cause man and garrison his house of Carnassary ; the same was be- 
sieged, and a treaty for surrender being in dependence, the deceased 

Lauchlane M'Laine, of Torlisk, Lauchlane M'Laine, of Coll, 

M'Laine, of Ardgour, M'Laine, of Kenlochalin, M-Laine, 

of Lochbuy, Donald M'Neil, of Collachie, Archibald M'Lauchlane, 

of Craiginterave, and M'Kerchnie, in Kintyre, conjunctly and 

severally, with their barbarous accomplices, did in the first place cause 
hang Dugald M'Tavish, fiar of Dunardarie, at the said house of Car- 
nassary, and immediately after the surrendering thereof, did barbarously 
murder Alexander Campbell, of Strondour, the petitioner's uncle, and 
without any regard to any conditions of faith given, they did fall upon 
and wound above twenty of the soldiers of the garrison, plunder and 
carry away out of the said house threescore horse led [i.e., laden] of 
goods and plenishing, and after all these cruelties and robberies, the 
said deceased Lauchlane M'Laine, of Torlisk, with his above-named 
followers and accomplices, did set fire to the said house of Carnassary, 
and burn it to ashes, and after all, your petitioner's estate being an- 
nexed to the crown, the rents thereof were intromitted with, and up- 
lifted by William Stewart, of Craigtown, as having commission from 
the lords of the treasury, since the year 1685, to Martinmas, 1689, and 
the same are yet in his hands ; and during this space, the said friends, 
tenants, and vassals, were, by the arbitrary exactions of the deceased 
viscount of Strathallan, and Sir John Drummond, of Machonie, op- 
pressed, leased, and damnified in certain great sums of money : likeas, 
the said Donald M'Neil of Collachie, and Archibald M'Lauchlane, of 
Craiginterave, did intromit with and take up out of the parishes of 
Knapdale, Kelislate, Glassary, and Ariskeodnish [i.e., Kilmartin], the 
number of 2000 cows, belonging to the petitioner, his friends and ten- 
ants ; and the said M'Kerchnie, in Kintyre, did seize upon the haill 
* Lives of the Lindsays, vol. ii., pp. 120-128. 
32 



494 THE LADIES OF THE COVENANT. 

poods and plenishing within the petitioner's house of Lochgair, where- 
through the petitioner, his said friends, tenants, and vassals, are disa- 
bled, leased, and damnified in the sums of money and avails following : 
viz., by the burning of the said house of Carnassary, in the sum of 
c£"'20,000 Scots; by the taking away of the said goods, as will appear 
by a particular list, in the sum of ^£20,000 money foresaid ; by his 
lying out of his estate intromit ted with by the said William Stewart 
in the sum of c£24,000 money foresaid : by the said arbitrary exactions 
of the said viscount Strathallan and Sir John Drummond, of Macho- 
nie, in the sum of e£l2,000 money aforesaid; and by the said Donald 
M'Neil, and Archibald M'Lauchlane, of Craiginterave, their intromit- 
ing with and taking up of the said 2000 cows, in the sum of 6640,000 
money foresaid ; and by the said M'Kerchnie, his taking away of the 
plenishing of the house of Lochgair, in the sum of<£2000 money fore- 
said ; extending in haill the said sums, to the sum of dCH8,000 Scots 
money foresaid."* 

* Acts of the Parliament of Scotland, Julv 8, 1600. 



THE END. 



A 

NEW AND CHARMING WORK, 

NOW PUBLISHING BY 

J. S. REDFIELD, CLINTON HALL, NEW- YORK, 



ENTITLED 



nry 



BY 



ACHETA DOMESTICA, M. E. S. 

Sit tl;ra imwc 

First Series INSECTS OF SPUING Now ready. 

Second Series INSECTS OF SUMMER Now ready. 

Third Series INSECTS OF ATTTTJMM Now ready. 

EXTRACTS FROM EDITORIAL NOTICES. 

The First Part of " Episodes of Insect Life,'''' from the press of J. S. Eedfield, 
is now ready — amply illustrated, a fac-simile of the English edition : a more 
charming hook, fresh with the fragrance of the country air, and musical with 
the rustle of insect wings, is not likely to he seen often. In the clearness of 
its type, the heauty of the illustrations, and the whole manner of its present- 
ment, the "Episodes" fairly gives the laurel to its tasteful and enterprising 
publisher. — Literary World. 

<t * * * * * ~n ow that we have introduced you, good reader, be plain with 
us, on your soul, if you know a circle of friends with whom you would rather 
spend a day than with these notable, gifted, companionable, and most charm- 
ing insect-folks 1 You see there is no lack of variety : there are grandfathers 
and grandmothers, brothers and sisters, grave judges and fops — though of 
better sort, and dressed in far purer taste than our humans — patricians and 
plebeians, subterranean and parlor aristocracy in the tree tops. 

" Eor a pure summer's day, when old Sol hath warmed his next friend, the 
Earth, to the heart's core, grant, oh ! Beneficence of all things ! that we may 
lie in ■ some gentle locust shadow, hard by a fragrant bower, with a smooth- 
flowing stream, our only human companion this Eedfield with his Episodes ; 
and shah we not be happier than the scourer of Waterloo, sailer on the Ehine, 
climber of the Alps, with his Eustace or Murray ? Believe us, a bee's wing is 
a mightier wonder than St. Peter's, and the wild fowl standing on one leg by 
a water-pool, more contemplative than the pyramids of the desert I" — Do. 



a NOTICES OF EPISODES OP INSECT LIFE. 

" In the beginning of the eighteenth century, the will of an English lady 
•was attempted to be set aside on the ground of lunacy, and the sole basis of 
the attempt was her fondness for collecting insects. It was thought to be an 
evidence of insanity to devote so much time to such a trivial pursuit. Since 
that period, the science of entomology has been labored upon and developed 
by some of the greatest and wisest men, and we have all been taught to see in 
the minutest forms of insect life further proofs of the existence and goodness 
of God. If the cultivation of this science had no other object than to manifest 
the Deity, it would deserve our utmost commendation. Medicine and the arts, 
however, are indebted to the study of entomology for many valuable dis- 
coveries. The book under notice is one of especial beauty and utility, and we 
heartily thank the publisher for his enterprise in putting it within the reach 
of American readers. It is worthy of a place in every family library. Ele- 
gantly illustrated and humorously yet chastely written, it is calculated to amuse 
and instruct all classes of readers." — Commercial Advertiser. 

" An elegant republication of a recent elegant English work. The author 
whom we might, perhaps, infer from the feminine designation on the title- 
page to be a lady, says, in the preface, that the work was not written with a 
view of teaching Entomology as a science, but of affording such a measure of 
acquaintance with the habits of the insect world as might awaken the desire 
for more exact and systematic knowledge. Several of the more commonly 
known insects — the cricket, the fly, the ant, the spider, the wasp, the bee, &c, 
are taken as examples of the large class of living things to which they belong, 
and accounts of their habits are given, illustrated with drawings representing 
them in the different stages of existence. The author is a zealous friend of 
some of these little creatures — in one part of the book is a chapter on the uses 
of flies, and another is entitled the Defence of Wasps. The book is pleas- 
ingly written, and will form an agreeable companion for a vacant hour in the 
ensuing summer." — Evening Post. 

" This is the title of one of the most beautiful American publications that 
we have ever seen. The paper and print are of the nicest, whilst the crowds 
of illustrations are 'even about' the daintiest possible. The binding, also, is 
all right, and the cover is blazoned over with golden spiders, and beetles, and 
butterflies. The contents are rambling and spirited sketches, ostensibly of 
Entomology, but really on matters and things in general, combining a good 
deal of amusement with a fair amount of instruction. Each 'chapter is headed 
with a correct engraving of some noted insect in its various stages of being, 
while at the conclusion of each is a grotesque embellishment, finely executed, 
of insects arrayed in armor, or in fashionable risr, in a style similar to that of 
the illustrations to "Wright's La Fontaine. The letter-press is not of value to 
the scientific reader, but it contains much that will add to the knowledge of 
people in general. It is written easily and gracefully, and accords well with 
the delicate beauty of the binding, print, and engravings of the volume." 

Morning Post. 

" Episodes of Insect Life. This is an elegantly printed and illustrated 
volume, containing ' authentic records ' of the insect world, wreathed about 
with the flowers of imagination and fancy, admirably adapted to popularise 
the subject. 



NOTICES OF EPISODES OF INSECT LIFE. 3 

" We conceive that there is a peculiar appropriateness in thus ornamenting 
the science of Entomology. The rich fancy of the author of this beautiful 
book may be fitly likened to the luxuriant verdure of leaves and flowers, 
among which live and sport so many of the tribes described. These inhabit- 
ants of the world of verdure and of the by-places and crannies of creation, 
with their tiny toils and pleasures — could they have a more appropriate his- 
torian ? 

" The getting up of the book is a really splendid specimen of taste. Mr. 

Eedfield should be exempted from the bite of a bug, or the sting of a 

mosquito, for the term of his natural life." — Whig Review. 



• of Insect Life,''' 1 just published by Eedfield, is the prettiest book 
we remember to have seen since our advent among books : butterflies, lady- 
birds, gnats, moths, and beetles, are most exquisitely pictured, with all sorts 
of quaint vignettes. The descriptions are charming ' Episodes,' and the paper, 
printing, and binding, have never been excelled in this country. If you have 
ever chased a butterfly, reader, go and buy this book." — Knickerbocker. 

" A pleasing novelty is this volume, both in its conception and in its execu- 
tion. The author personates the House Cricket, (Aclieta Donusti-ca,) and chirps 
as musically and domestically as does 'the Cricket on the Hearth' in the 
melodious 'Christmas Chimes.' A more tastefid and attractive book has 
never been issued from the American press. Its exquisite wood-cuts, repre- 
senting by most ingenious devices the developments and peculiarities of 
various insect tribes, its fine-textured lily leaves, its clear, bold letter-press, 
the charming vivacity of its style, its scientific information conveyed under 
the type of anecdote and illustration, its allegorical decorations, its keen satire 
and droll Esop-like moralizing — these all chain the eye to the volume, and 
make one quite enamored, not of the cricket only, but of his numerous com- 
peers of the insect world. Indeed we are almost disposed to regard our friend 
Lyon, with his magnetic powder, as a sort of wholesale murderer of innocence 
and beauty, and to upbraid ourselves for having, by recommendation, become 
auxiliary to the extermination of any species of ' varmint.' Hereafter the lady- 
reader of this volume when in her garden walks she shall encounter the spider 
spinning himself down upon her hood or cape, instead of screaming ' Ugh ! 
John, William, come kill this ugly creature !' will fondly say, ' Come hither, 
my Epeira Madema, spin for me thy pretty gossamer.' The stroller in the 
summer fields, instead of flying before the wasp, will pause to admire the 
graceful evolutions of the golden-winged but short-lived Vespa the builder of 
palace-tombs. And through the livelong summer night how shall we welcome 
the sharp violin-twang of the mosquito, and yield our veins to this phlebot- 
omizing practitioner of the old school. 

" What a world of wonders is thrown open to us in these mere episodes of 
insect life. Welcome, cricket, to our home ! In summer we will give thee 
■whatever of garden space the sepulchred enclosure of city walls allows, and in 
winter a deserted oven or whatever kitchen-range or cellar-furnace have left 
of that ancient realm of domestic joy, the hearth-stone and the chimney- 
corner. 

" This volume, following the order of the months, closes with April. We 
hope therefore that there are others in store. The subject presents a delight- 
ful field of contemplation to the devout and inquiring mind."— XT. T. Ind, 



4 NOTICES OF EPISODES OF INSECT LIFE. 

" In scope, style, and execution, this is a most tastefully elegant, and usefully 
entertaining book. It is a graphic, sprightly portraiture of the natural history 
of insects, written for popular reading, free from scientific terms, and abound- 
ing with curious facts, elegant descriptions, humorous anecdotes, and enthu- 
siastic interest, relative to the habits, appearance, uses, troubles, &c, of all 
the multitude of ephemera. The work is comprised in three volumes, one 
relating to the Insects of Spring, another to those of Summer, and the third 
to those of Autumn. Mr. Eedfield has issued the first ; and in a style of typo- 
graphy and illustration of remarkable taste and beauty. The engravings are 
exquisitely fine, printed in letter-press, yet with an elegance and finish which 
was never attained on wood. Some new art lias been applied here, evidently, 
producing extraordinary effects. These plates are numerous, ingenious, and 
tastefully disposed. It is a work which will give delight to all classes of 
readers, mingling science and romance, anecdote, and fact, taste and knowl- 
edge, with such skill and sprightlincss, that, whether taken up as a book of 
learning or a book of leisure, it will be equally sure to please. The English 
journals and reviews have been for some time praising it, and we are very 
glad to see it in this elegant form, so well adapted to win its way where the 
same useful knowledge, in a more homely garb, woidd find but little wel- 
come." — i\ r . Y. Evangelist. 

" A volume of essays, sketches, and stories illustrative of the habits of Insect 
Life. Its poetic and imaginative style will attract all who can appreciate wit 
and humor, made subsidiary to the diffusion of interesting and valuable in- 
formation. The general appearance of the book is quite in harmony with its 
literary excellence, presenting a model of typography, &c." — Journal of Com. 

" Episodes of Insect Life, by Acheta Domestica, M. E. S. : Is the title of a 
beautiful volume, illustrated in the most admirable and artistic style. This 
work is a specimen of typographical neatness, and its contents unfold the won- 
ders of the insect world in the most pleasing and fanciful manner. It is the 
volume of all others, which our readers will take with them during the sum- 
mer months to the sea shore or the bush. The author, in a single line, pro- 
vokes one to laughter and thought, and concludes even- sentence by imparting 
some useful little bit of information." — Boston Evening Gazette. 

" This splendid volume is a reprint of an English work which has attained 
a well deserved celebrity abroad, and is now introduced in a beautiful form to 
American readers. Its author is an enthusiastic entomologist, and gives every 
desirable evidence of belonging to that very small class, the true lovers of 
nature. Of pretenders to the simple taste which is exhibited in these pages, 
multitudes may be found, any where, but Walton, and "White, and Davy, are 
as far removed from such sentimentalists, as angels are above men. This book 
has points of affinity with the complete Angler, the Natural History of Shel- 
borne and Salmonia. There is much poetry in it — not a little of rare and 
curious matter, and a great deal of scientific knowledge. It is written in an 
easy and elegant style, and is destined to live. 

" The style in which this volume is issued, is an honor to the American press. 
The head and tail pieces to the chapters, are in a high style of art ; and are 
favorable specimens of the perfection to which wood-engraving has attained 
among us. There are few American works which will compare with it in ap- 
pearance. Nobody will repent buying it." — Old Colony Memorial. 



NOTICES OF EPISODES OF INSECT LIFE. 5 

" "We have read this work and felt our interest and admiration rising, and 
strengthening, with every page. The authoress, for we are told, ' Acheta' is a 
lady, deserves all praise for her work, and may well he proud of what she has 
accomplished. In the words of one whose opinion is worth having, on account 
of his natural and cultivated capacity of discernment of things essentially me- 
ritorious, and beautiful, we can say, that if the publications of the lust twenty 
years were gathered together, we doubt if a work more charming and delight- 
ful could be found, than this. We are lured into pleasant knowledge out of 
' blissful ignorance,' by the tempting fictions, and ' thin veils ' of fancy, Acheta 
presents — her style too is the most agreeable, sprightly, and spicy imagin- 
able. She is a chatty, charming author, ' and no mistake.' 

" This volume, (we have seen and read) is the first of the three which form 
the complete series. All sorts of insects, their appearance, personal, and 
habits individual, are well discussed, and the illustrations given, are perfect 
gems. Eyes that love to feast on things fanciful, and most beautiful, and 
thoughts willing to be beguiled into useful and intellectual amusements, will be 
attracted and enchained by the work, without a doubt. 

Me. Eedfield deserves all praise too, for re-publishing this graceful book in 
a style so worthy of its prototype, and we are confident that the appreciative 
will not rest satisfied with paying him merely in thanks." — Bocliester Democrat. 

" This book, which Mr. Eedfield has done himself great honor in publish- 
ing in such exquisite style, is a fit annual for the summer holidays. We have 
no where, in late time, met a work so every way charming — the binding is 
beautiful — the paper and type perfect, and the illustrations admirably executed 
after the most original of all original designs. But this dress would be an ag- 
gravation after all, and a despicable one too, if the reader of this first volume 
of three, which are given to the nature, habits, and ' outward manifestation' 
of the Insects of Spring, Summer and Autumn, did not feel charmed, inter- 
ested and much instructed, by the perusal. The style is graceful, full of 
humor, and faultlessly beautiful ; and of all books, in which lovers of fiction are 
charmed into the bondage and study of facts, of all at least which we have met, 
we pronounce this the very best. The authoress, ' Acheta' is a woman, so the 
Eeviews tell us— says that "the following essays have been written, not with a 
view of teaching Entomology as a science, but of affording such a measure of 
acquaintance with the habits of the Insect world, as may serve to promote the 
ulterior and more useful design of cultivating the rudimental seeds of system- 
atic investigation." We do not quote this opening sentence of the preface as a 
specimen of the style of the writer ; the reader who would not read the pre- 
face through, perhaps, could not, we venture to say, lay the work aside with- 
out expressing, as we do, our hearty admiration ; nor without the hope that 
our people may prove in the judgment they pass upon it, a love for a range of 
light and useful literature, a little exalted above the ' Milliner line.' " — Ontario 



" This is a book for drawing-rooms and watering-places, and certainly high- 
ly novel and entertaining. While mingling the pleasant with the useful, it 
presents many facts which, however well known to naturalists, will leave some- 
thing worthy of remembrance in the minds of the class for which it is evi- 
dently designed — the votaries of fashion and people of leisure, who rarely 
trouble the sciences, and when they do so, limit themselves to the regular ten 
minutes of a morning call." — Sar tain's Magazine. 



6 NOTICES OF EPISODES OF INSECT LIFE. 

" This is one of the most interesting works that we ever perused. It is 
truly original in its conception. The habits and pursuits of various tribes of 
the insect race are described, in such a manner as to give it the interest of a 
romance, and yet it is a thorough scientific work. The author has recorded 
their habits as we might suppose one of their own class of beings would do, 
substituting reason for instinct, and clothing the insects described, with the 
attributes of mankind, of various classes of which they are made the type. 
The essays, says the author, ' were written not with a view of teaching ento- 
mology as a science, but of affording such a measure of acquaintance with the 
habits of the insect world, as may serve to promote the ulterior and more 
useful design of cultivating the rudimental seeds of systematic investigation.' 
The book is illustrated with numerous beautiful engravings of different in- 
sects, and its mechanical execution is superior."— Christian Freeman. 

" One of the most charming books of this or any other day ; conveying a 
store of entomological knowledge, in a style the most amusing and delightful. 
It is embellished with etchings on steel in the best stvle of art. The printing, 
paper, typography, and whole mechanical appearance, is most creditable to 
Mr. Ledfield. We have marked some passages from the book, that will give 
our readers a taste of its quality. But in Harpers' Magazine, the Living Age 
and other periodicals, the author's playful pages have already been made free 
with to a considerable extent ; and all who have read an extract will desire to 
possess the entire volume."— Boston Transcript. 

" This is an elegant reprint of a very charming London book, the first of a 
series, embracing the Insects of Spring. It will be followed successively by 
the Insects of Summer, and the Insects of Autumn. The English press extol 
the work in very high terms ; and from a hasty perusal, we are inclined to 
think the book can hardly be overpraised. It treats the subject scientifically 
and yet familiarly; so that all classes of readers, who have any taste for the 
wonders and beauties of Nature, will be equally interested in its pages. 

The style in which Mr. Kedfield has issued this work has hardly been sur- 
passed, in the typography and illustrations, by any work got up in this coun- 
try. It is as elegant as an annual, and vastly more instructive and entertain- 
ing." — Evening Mirror. 

" The volume is beautifully printed, illustrated with exquisite taste and 
humor, and written in a style which gives to the results of much observation 
and study, and to a subject repulsive to many, all the charms of a fain- tale 
The mysteries of instinct, as developed in the myriad forms of insect life^ form 
a theme of inexhaustible variety ; and the author has brought the inspiration 
of a poetic genius to its illustration. 

We do not venture to conjecture who the author or authoress mav be. We 
suppose this will be revealed with the subsequent numbers of the series, for 
the subject is one that will so tempt the writer and the public, that neither 
will be content with a single volume."— Albany Atlas. 

« This is a remarkable work. It treats of the most interesting peculiarities 
of insect hfe, but mixes with its sketches poetic, romantic and didactic dis- 
courses in abundance. The style of the writer is elegant, and the mechanical 
execution of the book especially fine. It abounds in quaint plates, which adds 
much to the interest of the text."— Zioris Herald. 



NOTICES OF EPISODES OP INSECT LIFE. 7 

" A rare and very beautiful book upon bugs : tbe poetry of insect life : a 
new subject for the fancy, but well treated, so as to furnish instruction with 
entertainment, and being embellished with numerous engravings, and ele- 
gantly printed, it forms a handsome volume for the parlor." — JV. Y. Observer. 

"A book for young and old, of more than usual interest, is 'Episodes of 
Insect Life,' published by J. S. Kedfield, New York. The plan of this fa- 
miliar entomological treatise, if so grave a word as treatise may be used, is 
novel and attractive ; and the reader is led on from page to page, and from 
chapter to chapter, almost as if he were poring over a romance. The charms 
of poetic association, allegoric fable, and moral analogy, are all brought into re- 
quisition by the author, who has succeeded in the production of a most de- 
lightful work, which the pubfisher has profusely embellished. Some of the 
illustrations are quaint enough. We heartily recommend ' Episodes of Insect 
Life,' as a book from which all readers may gain amusement and instruction." 

Arthur's Gazette. 

" The lovers of Natural History will find a rich treat in this beautiful volume. 
Avoiding the dry details of a technical nomenclature, the genial writer describes 
the curious phenomena of insect life with the delightful simplicity and unction 
of an enthusiast for nature. Even if the work were not recommended by the 
extent and fullness of its information, it would still derive a perpetual charm 
from the quaint humor and delicate beauty of its style. The embellishments, 
with which it is profusely illustrated, are engraved with great softness and 
fidelity. No book has recently been issued from the New York press which 
presents a more creditable specimen of elegant typography." — JV. Y. Tribune. 

" A new work, published by J. S. Kedfield, of this city, on the 'Episodes 
of Insect Life,' is one of the most interesting and beautiful books of the 
present season. It is an 8vo. volume of 320 pages, profusely illustrated with 
engravings, executed with great beauty and fidelity. The genial writer de- 
scribes the curious phenomena of insect life with the delightful simplicity and 
unction of an enthusiast for nature. The value of the work, for the extent 
and fullness of its information, is far beyond its mere price, and its interest is 
greatly enhanced by the delicacy and quaintness of its style. Its typographi- 
cal execution is in the highest style of the art." — Sears' 1 Family Visitor. 

" This work is playfully written, and contains much that is interesting, and 
will be new to most readers on the subject of which it treats. It is very prettily 
illustrated with well executed engravings." — Boston Daily Advertiser. 

" This is a veiy agreeable book, which has attracted considerable attention 
in England. It is not intended as a scientific work, but rather as a popular 
treatise, showing the nature, the habits, and the life of the insect tribes which 
crowd the earth and swarm the air. The author defends the order of nature 
in the insect creation, and shows their uses in the great economy of nature. 
The various kinds of insects are arranged in the order of the months in which 
they make their appearance, and as the four first months only are exhausted, 
we infer that the volume before us will be foUowed by others iipon the same 
subject. If they are as well written as this, they will find many readers. The 
book is beautifuUy printed, and is illustrated with numerous engravings."— 
Providence Journal. 



8 NOTICES OP EPISODES OF INSECT LIFE. 

" This is a very interesting volume, and will be found a most attractive 
work to all ages, for, while it is amusing and playful in its language, it is re- 
plete with valuable information. It is an account of the habits of those insects 
which appear with us in the spring. It describes their various transformations, 
their changeable states and conditions, without the use of hard technical lan- 
guage, but most intelligibly to the general reader. It might be called Science 
made pleasure, or Fact made fanciful. The work is embellished by numerous 
engravings, but at the present time, the air and ground is full, and the whole 
face of nature teems with illustrations to this agreeable work. A finer speci- 
men of typography is rarely seen, and we commend it to all those who would 
see in nature constant illustrations of the power and goodness of its great 
Creator, whose every work doth praise Him.— Newark Daily Advertiser. 

" This beautifully printed and illustrated work is not indebted to its me- 
chanical execution, solely, for its attractiveness. It is written in a style singu- 
larly fascinating, and abounds with facts regarding the Insect tribes, which 
would rivet the wondering attention of the reader, were they presented through 
the medium of a less attractive style. It is evident that the author has not 
written this work merely for name of the thing-nor was he prompted to the 
task solely for the good it might do— for there is a genial feeling pervading the 
book, which evidences that he has a love for his subject that renders it a 
pleasant pastime for him to prepare such a volume. The volume was written 
for popular circulation, and will not therefore perplex the minds of the un- 
initiated by the use of scientific terms of definition. No reader can fail of en- 
tering with hearty sympathy into the soliloquy of the author as he is roused 
from his revery by the chirp of the cricket on the hearth, whom he captures 
and this familiar manner will insure readers who would be repelled from a 
work of more dignity. 

" A knowledge of the phenomena which the science of Entomology exhibits 
is useful to the heart as well as the head. The wonderful instinct of many of 
these insects, is a demonstration of the existence of a Creator who has gifted 
them with the faculty of adapting means to ends which secure their highest 
usefulness and happiness. That this instinct is a faculty specially imparted, 
and not the result of the creature's own thought or reasoning power, is evident 
from the fact that he has no faculty of overcoming any obstacle which may in- 
terfere with the uniform operation of that instinct, even though it might be 
overcome by a far less exercise of contrivance and foresight, than is displayed 
m that instinct itself. The intent of this volume is not to teach Natural 
Theology, but it nevertheless does so, and, like many works of similar charac- 
ter, is valuable not only for what it imparts, but what it suggests." 

Wwoerley Magazine. 
" A beauty of a book ! As the Irish say when hungry, a broth of a book ! 
It does not teach entomology as a science ; but, in a manner, steals it unto you, 
while you are only unbending your mind by watching the habits of the insect 
world. Here you have a delightful mixture of natural history, observation, 
anecdote, poetry, and moralizing, which it will be well worth your while to 
make your own. The getting-up of the volume is exceedingly handsome, with 
lovely paper and print, and full of illustrations. Children would devour it, 
and eat it over and over again for the fiftieth time. Every copy sold, is sure 
to be worn out with constant use."— Puritan liecorder. 



NOTICES OF EPISODES OP INSECT LIFE. W 

" This is one of the most charming books we have seen issued from the 
New York press in many a day ; and it comes to us most appropriately at the 
opening of summer, when the people it describes come into active life. We 
almost feci disposed to apologize to the publisher for being so long in noticing 
it. But by some 'untoward' circumstance or other, it passed beyond our 
reach. We could not help imagining that, according to a natural law, so great 
was its attraction, the copy laid on our table either carried off somebody, or 
somebody carried off it — the same thing to us — so that we could not do it jus- 
tice at an earlier day. We now, though late, pay our respects to it. The paper, 
the type, the exquisite delicacy of the engraving, the tasteful style of the 
binding, the enchanting nature of the subject, and the fascinating manner in 
which it is written, render it altogether a gem of its kind. Most of the busy 
gold-seeking race of mankind, care but little' about natural histories of the 
insect people; and for ourself we must say, that in our boyhood days, we never 
cared to look farther among this people than the butterfly and the bee ; to chase 
the one was among our greatest pleasures, and to be chased by the other, among 
our greatest terrors ; for who would not dread the sting of a bee ? To those 
who have found the minute and systematic classification of Kirby and Spence, 
of Eennie and Jardine, of Burmeister and Westwood, dry and uninteresting, 
this volume will be a desideratum, as the author has made ' philosophy in 
spirit science in earnest,' and thrown around the subject such a ' charm of ad- 
ventitious interest and reflected consequence,' as renders it wholly irresistible. 
If, then, any of our readers have one single grain of taste for the fine arts, or 
curiosity to know anything about the antics of the cricket, the winter life of 
the fly, the aeronautic expeditions of the spider, the transformations of the 
silk-worm, the art of war among the wasps, the political and domestic economy 
of the bee, and the navigation of water-devils, so called, he will here find the 
whole invested with an interest which throws the Arabian Nights and Don 
Quixote into the shade. This gives marvellous facts — these but marvellous 
pictures. We prophesy an extensive circulation for this volume." 

Ch. Intelligencer. 

"We have received a copy of this beautiful and instructive work, and have 
perused a portion of its contents with unusual satisfaction and delight. It is 
gracefully and enticingly written, and gradually involves the reader in the 
study and investigation of a branch of natural history, which he might never 
have penetrated without the literary inducements and charms of a book of this 
description. In addition to its intrinsic merits, it is a beautiful ornament, and 
will rank with the finest annuals of the day."— Penn. Statesman. 

" This is a remarkable production, dedicated to Kirby and Spence, the well 
known entomologists, and to Professor Forbes, the interesting historian of 
zoological instincts. The object of the work is to give, in an interesting, at- 
tractive, and amusing form, sketches of the habits of the insect world. It is 
beautifully got up, and abounds in quaint and humorous illustrations." 

Boston Atlas. 

"This is a series of very entertaining essays by an observer of nature, and 
written with a view to direct attention to the habits of the insect world. The 
author does not confine himself to the subject like a teacher, but rambles 
pleasantly about like an amateur. The work is beautifully printed, and mag- 
nificently illustrated." — Philadelphia ledger. 



10 NOTICES OP EPISODES OF INSECT LIFE. 

" This is a beautiful work. It is the first of a series of volumes intended to 
illustrate insect life, not by dry details of their habits, but by investing it with 
all the charm derived from a vivid imagination. The present volume compre- 
hends the months of January, February, March, and April, and is to be fol- 
lowed by others referring to the insects of summer and autumn. It is a book 
for every one to study, for it will present insect life to them in an entirely new 
light. Take, for instance, the chapters entitled, 'The Gnat— a life of buoy- 
ancy,' — and, 'A defence of "Wasps, 1 — and we think that every reader will find 
in them something original and striking. "While it gives us the poetry of in- 
sect life, and mingled with its graphic and imaginative coloring are rich series 
of humor, it answers also a higher end. It abounds with curious and accurate 
information. 

" The engravings, with which it is illustrated, are copied exactly from the 
English edition. Each chapter has a head and tail-piece, which are vignettes 
clever and quaint, showing insects in all stages, capitally grouped with a scenic 
background. The enterprising publishers are entitled to great credit for the 
beautiful style in which the work is brought out." — Albany Register. 

" An elegantly printed and gracefully conceived work on the most interesting 
and least familiar branch of natural history. To our taste, it is quite as pleasing 
a work to peruse as one of pure invention, while the consciousness that it re- 
cords facts of nature, add vastly to the charm. A more delightful book for 
summer reading can scarcely be imagined. The ant, the bee, the gnat, and 
other denizens of the insect world, have their biographies here winsomely re- 
vealed. To the mature and juvenile reader we cordially commend the book, 
and award the publisher great credit for the exquisite style of its mechanical 
execution." — Home Journal. 

" We have been laboring in our quiet way for a number of years, as our 
readers very well know, to cultivate a taste for reading, which should be ele- 
vated above the magazine love tales, novels abounding in sickly sentiment- 
alities, French morals, and exaggerated, and mutilated pictures of life in its 
most hideous phases, and we hail with no little satisfaction the publication of 
the book with the above title, published by our neighbor Redfield, as an ally 
worthy the highest consideration. 'Episodes of Insect Life,' gentle reader, is 
a book which, to our mind, far exceeds in interest any book on Natural History 
we have ever read. Full of freshness, of facts, of fancies, and abounding in 
the poetry of her subject, the fair authoress — for we see it stated in the Eng- 
lish Magazines that the work is the production of a lady — luxuriates among 
lady-birds, crickets, moths, aphides, caterpillars, gnats, &c, &c, till we are 
fairly carried away with the charms with which she invests her subject, and 
resolve to get our bait boxes and other appliances together, and start off on an 
entomological excursion. The manner in which the publisher has performed 
his part of the work, affords abundant evidence that he is over head and ears 
in love with his subject — a more beautiful book has never issued from the 
American press."- — Phrenological Journal. 

" Those curious in the science of Entomology, r who take an interest in 
studying the characteristics of the various 'insect tribes,' will find much to 
edify and instruct them, in the elegant volume before us. Its style is amusing, 
racy, and attractive. In addition to the neat letter-press appearance, it is illus- 
trated with numerous fine and elegant pictorial embellishments. It is superbly 
bound — and altogether, it is an attractive volume." — Rochester Daily Advertiser '. 

LRBFe?9 ^O 




V* 



■-•Vv"', 



■ 



